


Volée

by veroniqueclaire



Category: Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera & Related Fandoms, Le Fantôme de l'Opéra | Phantom of the Opera - Gaston Leroux, Phantom - Susan Kay, Phantom of the Opera - Lloyd Webber
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Glam and on the lam, With a surprising number of Leroux references
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-21
Updated: 2016-12-21
Packaged: 2018-09-08 22:27:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 100,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8865739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/veroniqueclaire/pseuds/veroniqueclaire
Summary: Think of this as Down Once More: the extended, modern-day, jet set remix. Gunshot wounds, fast cars, first class flights, FBI in pursuit - but it's the quiet moments, the conversations, that leave Christine shaken. Hurtling towards her inevitable decision.





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This story is complete and already posted over at FF.n -- many fans have said they prefer AO3 nowadays, so I'll be posting it here as well. Here are the first few chapters to get you started, and I'll gradually add the rest over the next month or so. Reviews are the reason I write, and I would love to hear what you think!

No time, no choices - a theater full of armed agents, a trap within a trap, and three thousand unaware members of the audience watching her personal agony play out onstage. The slow loss of power over her own life in the last few weeks had suddenly turned rapid; everything was wildly spiraling out of control and Christine was flailing, desperate, singing with panic and passion by turns, because it was him - _him_ \- under that hood, in Piangi's role. Surely he had something planned, surely someone would die tonight, and -

She did the only thing she had any power to do.

Whatever his plan was, she was disrupting it; her hands rose up and pulled back the cowl hood he wore.

The crowd gasped as his mask came into view, glaringly white under the stage lights, and the strains of Don Juan Triumphant squawked into silence. She vaguely registered the sound of music instruments clattering to the floor as the musicians in the orchestra scattered, but her eyes were locked on his.

Erik seemed immune to the sudden chaos; he simply tilted his head and looked at her; sadness radiating from him when she would have expected anger. He laid a hand across his chest, and reached out for her with the other, and for a moment she thought he meant to stroke his fingertips down her cheek… but he was reaching for the microphone wired into the collar of her dress, recording the performance for the radio broadcast. He took the microphone between two fingers and snapped the head off with his thumb, and when it hit the floor she saw his own microphone already there, frayed wires trailing, knowing whatever he said next was meant only for her.

"I wish you hadn't done that." Erik's voice was angry and hurt, controlled and careful. He reached out again across the small space between them, his hand hovering above her bicep, holding her in place without actually touching her, and she saw him hesitate for a moment, before finally grating out the words through a clenched jaw, "but I would forgive you anything if you would be my wife."

She swayed on her feet, numbly staring at him, vaguely aware of the audience in pandemonium, of the slams as the police sealed each door leaving the theatre.

"I asked you before," he said, speaking more quickly, "and you didn't have an answer. Do you have one now?"

She could kill him with a few words. Or with a quick move of her wrist - that was the plan, that was what she was supposed to do if he had approached her tonight. Show the world his face and surely he would be paralysed by it. Keep him in place until they could cart him off to jail… had anyone expected it would be center stage?

Raoul was watching, certainly, right now; waiting at some vantage point with the FBI agents who'd plotted her little role as bait for an alleged killer. Any kindness she showed Erik would crush Raoul. But to go through with Raoul and Agent Khan's plan would shatter the man who stood raw and wounded before her. She... she couldn't. They couldn't make her. She...

"We don't have a lot of time," Erik said quickly, seriously, taking his eyes off her for a moment to eye the agents and policemen moving up the aisles towards the stage, pushing upstream through the surge of fleeing audience members. "Please, Christine - tell me you want to leave with me." His voice lifted, hopeful...

The agents were only a dozen rows from the stage now, and she couldn't see Raoul, didn't know what he must think, didn't know what to do, didn't know what she wanted. Anything she said or did would hurt one of them, and her head hurt, and...

"I will do anything - go anywhere, just say you'll come with me. Any terms, you wished to set… I - I want nothing - nothing but you," and Erik's voice was breaking now, and she saw his eyes, pleading beneath the mask.

She inhaled shakily and tried to find her voice. "I..."

"Christine! Get back!" Raoul shouted, and a shot rang out. She whipped her head towards the sound of his voice and saw him standing in Box 5 with a rifle, and then she whirled back to follow the path of his bullet. Erik dropped the hand that had been hovering above her arm, pushing the cloak back and clamping his right hand over his left shoulder, and blood seeped down the shirtsleeve, beneath his fingers. The police rounded the corner of the stage and began tramping up the steps.

"Executive decision, then." Erik said determinedly, and let go of his wound to fling his good arm around her and draw her in, his forearm secure on the small of her back, pulling her flush against his chest and she gasped at the sudden contact. He looked down and clicked a remote of some kind in his left hand, explosions burst from each corner of the stage, and the floor dropped out beneath them.

She was choking as they fell, a mouthful of dry metallic smoke in her lungs and her stomach and her throat as she flailed; terrified, falling twenty feet or more. Erik seemed to twist in midair and pull her down and then a there was a solid resounding boom and a massive gust of air. Her ribs knocked against his and the air left her lungs as they landed, he on his back and her - oh dear - on top of him, on some kind of quickly collapsing air cushion six feet tall.

It was difficult to even process what had happened, or where he was taking her - back to his home? Her chest hurt and her knee was twisted and Erik...Erik was staring at her with so much concern in his eyes that she felt a rush of shame at the weeks she'd just spent being passively dragged into a plan to betray him.

"Are you injured?" he asked - no, implored - some mix of fear and care playing out across the uncovered half of his face.

"I… don't think so," she said in a cracking whisper, tears forming in her eyes, and she didn't even bother wondering why, anymore.

"Good," he said, suddenly swift and focused and distinctly uncomfortable, as he finally appeared to take note of their compromising position. "We have to go."

He rolled to the side, shifting out from beneath her with surprising deftness, sliding to the edge of the air cushion and standing as he unhooked the cloak, letting it ripple to the floor. "The trap door was designed to shut behind us, but we have about ten minutes before they find their way down here via the tunnels under the stage, or even less time if they just blast through the mechanism on the door and jump as we did." As she scooted to the edge and stood, he eyed the mostly deflated cushion that had caught them. "Their landing might be less pleasant, though," he added, with a sort of wry malice in his voice.

"Erik..." Christine said, her voice wavering, "What will happen to them?"

He began walking away, pulling her along by an iron grip on her bicep, and she stumbled after him without question. Erik when he was determined, Erik when he was angry… neither one was someone she had the strength to cross. He led them out of the cavernous basement room and down a poorly lit hallway.

"By 'them', I assume you're asking about your handsome fool?" he asked, with a mocking sharpness. "I suspect the same thing that would happen to any man who jumps headfirst into something he knows nothing about. He'll break his neck.' Erik looked at her pointedly, and she broke eye contact, trying not to let the anger in his tone affect her; then her eyes fell upon the redness spreading across his white tuxedo shirt.

"Oh, your arm... oh!" she cried, and moved to look at it. He jerked away from her and stepped backwards, still walking quickly.

"Surface wound." He cut her off tersely, as they reached the end of the hallway and he opened the door, revealing another dark tunnel beyond. He produced a flashlight from nowhere, and went on, "I could have cut myself deeper shaving my face. That is, if I -"

"Let me see it," she jumped in - hating the self-contempt in his tone, worried about him and angry at him, and in so far over her head with him, with Raoul, with Agent Khan and the plan and everything she was feeling…

"Christine, we have a short amount of time before there is an exceedingly unpleasant encounter between your young man and myself. He would not survive it. If you'd like to altogether avoid such an ugly tete-a-tete - and I say that without irony - I suggest that we run."

He stopped short as he said this, his voice acidic and deadly serious, echoing in the arched concrete tunnel.

"You would kill him?" Christine asked in a terrified whisper, her stomach dropping out as the depth of this situation became clear, the pieces falling sickeningly into place. She felt shocked - and stupidly knew that she shouldn't be, after Buquet.

"You seem to inspire that impulse in men, my dear," he said dryly, and gestured at his own wounded arm. "And if you think I wouldn't kill to keep you, then you underestimate the depths of this - of this feeling, in my chest, in my veins, even now. And don't think I've forgotten about you cutting my opera short back there - but, in spite of it all, _I love you_. I would rather not end any lives tonight - it's tiresome for me and I suspect it will not endear me to you - but you should know that I am wholly capable of doing so."

"You give me no choice!" she cried angrily, jerking her arm free and throwing down her hands. "I must come with you, or stay and see you kill Raoul when he catches up to us. You asked me onstage to make a decision! As though I had some say in the matter. What would you have done if I had said no?"

For the first time, he looked tired. With a weariness that suggested he had asked himself the same question many times, he said, "I'm not certain."

How could he still look at her with such exhausted adoration, when it so clearly caused him pain? His expression hardened, though, and he went on, flippant and defensive again. "I like to think that if you had the decency to treat me as a man, I would have the decency to let you go. To wish you well... and then to end my own days and be done with all of it, with everything. A fatal dose of morphine would be simple enough.. But I don't know if I would have been that good a man, if the moment had come down to it."

"You would have killed yourself?" she whispered hollowly, horrified, not hearing the rest of his words. "You meant to let me go and then die if I chose to leave? That's awful… That's not ok! You can't say things like that - it doesn't even make sense! If that's how you feel, why threaten Raoul now?"

"Because... because you didn't choose to leave," he said, hesitantly, hopefully, his voice regaining its beauty, its seductive ability to surround her. "You've had several chances to choose, and yet you never do. If you detested me, Christine, if you loved that fool, you would have told me no. So, I wonder if a change of scenery, the absence of 'distractions,' will help you make up your mind." He walked toward her, circling, slowly, his whole posture seeming to straighten and gain confidence until he was finally standing behind her, and then she heard him say, softly in her ear, "Perhaps you cannot say it yet - but I believe you want to be mine. That you know you _belong_ with me, with a life of music -"

She inhaled with such speed that she felt dizzy, startled by his proximity, by his words, by the feeling of his breath on her neck, overwhelmed by the events of the last quarter hour. She breathed out, "I... I don't know what I want..."

An explosion sounded from the hallway behind them, followed by distant shouts.

"Right. They'll be coming down the hatch now," he said with a bit of genuine levity in his voice. She could sense him, standing behind her, leaning closer, closer... and then he brushed by her. "You do distract me," he said, somewhere between desirous and fond, looking back at her to make contact with eyes flashing.

He took hold of her arm again and pulled her along; she walked, dazedly, her feet numb. They turned into different tunnels at every fork, and she wondered, head swimming, if at some point they had exited the basements of the Metropolitan Opera House and entered the tunnels for the subway system - but Erik kept them moving. The sounds of crashes and explosions echoed behind them.

The tunnel turned a final corner, and a heavy metal grate blocked further progress. Erik walked up to a panel on the wall nearby and punched some beeping sequence of buttons, and the barrier slowly lifted. Striding through to the other side, he retrieved what looked to be... a rather nice carry on bag? ... stashed against the wall. He unzipped it quickly and withdrew a fitted black wool coat, giving it a good shake to unfurl it, then headed towards her.

"Your costume is lovely, but this will be much less conspicuous," he murmured in a tone so warm and comforting she nearly slipped into simply following his orders.

"Erik..." she paused mid-step, overcoming her first instinct to extend her arms and let him put the coat on her. "Where are we going?" Christine gestured at the carry on bag.

"Any one of the eight destinations we have tickets for, depending on when we arrive at the airport. We won't be at any of them for long," he replied, his voice gentle and reassuring, holding out the coat.

"What will they think? When will we come home?" she said, suddenly feeling very small, and scared.

"I am decidedly unconcerned with what anyone thinks, and we'll hopefully never come back here. You won't miss it. Let me show you…" The intoxicating certainty in his voice wavered; worry and urgency crept in around the edges.

Christine was frozen; knees locked and simply standing there numbly blinking at him, completely overwhelmed by the array of terrible options in front of her. Any action she took would hurt someone, and the idea of rejecting Erik, or endangering Raoul, or being some sort of hostage herself was awful. Everything was so awful... and she felt herself withdrawing, her mind curling inward protectively, drawing her into a fog of blankness. She wanted to curl up and sleep, and escape decisions indefinitely.

"We can discuss this at length later, but we need to leave now," Erik was calling to her, but she was detached, dazed, unable to answer, to decide, to do anything. The echoing cries from down the tunnel grew louder, closer, more defined, and he reached over to the panel of buttons on the wall and lowered the steel grate again behind them.

" _Christine_ ," he said, drawing her attention back. "That gate will keep them from taking you, but I assure you, the FBI agents will be approaching with weapons drawn - they'll fire at me on first sighting, and when I retaliate, I will kill that boy _first_. Is that what you want?

She shook her head wildly, throwing tears out of the corners of her eyes.

"Then come with me. You _want_ to..." he said emphatically, as though he were striving to convince them both, gesturing forward but she remained fixed in place.

"It would not be so terrible..." Erik looked distinctly uncomfortable with the words, the exposed half of his face wincing, as he continued, quickly, all in a rush, "I would not make you do anything you didn't wish to... A bit of travel and then we can stay somewhere, and you can sing, and I can be happy - just being where you are, I would be happy - caring for you. And eventually, you might-" and his voice cracked, choking with emotion, wet eyes meeting her own.

"Dammit, just find her!" came a clear cry from down the hallway, Raoul's voice rising above the others, the sounds of the agents approaching closer.

"I don't want to hurt anyone!" Christine finally said in a helpless whisper.

Erik studied her for a moment, then walked towards her with the coat, sliding it onto her right arm, and walking around behind her to help with the other side. He took her left hand in his, and looking down as he guided it towards the sleeve, he took a deep breath and said quietly, "Forgive me, then. This will hurt."

The movement was so swift, she didn't even have time to react - just to stare, as his hand slid up to grip her forearm and his other hand reached into his pocket and emerge with something plastic in his grasp; then there was a cold pinch in the crook of her elbow, a plunge into her veins, stars in her eyes and then she was falling forwards, towards him, into darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note - The first five chapters of Volée were written from 2006-2007, and the story sat unfinished for quite some time before my muse came roaring back in 2012 and updates have continued relatively regularly ever since. I've dusted these early chapters off a bit, since my writing style has grown over the years, but I still feel that the new material chapter 6 is where it starts to really get good.
> 
> This story came to me on a day of five airports, four connecting flights, and wondering how "Down Once More," would have gone in the modern day, with a Christine who was slightly more torn about her part in the plot to catch Erik. This is my first modernization, but I think you'll find that aside from things like cars and computers, our characters are very much the same.
> 
> A note on the title - Volée is a french word (pronounced approx: "voh-laye") ...meaning both "stolen" and "flown." They're pronounced identically, and French speakers figure out which meaning is intended based on context. The story will be the context. :-)
> 
> I keep a storyboard tumblr of all the fashion, travel and other images that inspire this story - you can see the universe I'm imagining for Volée at veroniqueclaire*tumblr*com
> 
> -Ver


	2. Chapter 2

Sounds entered her perception first; the purr of an engine growing louder, the crackle of tires on wet pavement.

Christine lolled awake slowly, pulled out of syrupy unconsciousness, gradually aware as centripetal force threw her body out on a swift turn left, the seat belt catching her before she hit the door, passenger side, and dropping her back into the dark leather seat. Her limbs felt painless, lovely and weightless, and she slumped a bit, sliding lower in the chair. Her head rolled to the side, so much easier than staying upright…. and when her eyes made their way up, she saw streetlights blurrily swirling above her in the moonroof, glimmering as they slid by. The lights seemed brighter, their glow extended, some sparkle like nothing she'd ever known, beautiful.

The engine revved higher, and dropped, then higher still, and dropped again, growing, roaring, the car seeming to leap forward, and her head fell down, her chin too heavy to lift. Christine struggled, blinking, to make her eyes focus... blurry, in, out... she blinked, and concentrated, on the fuzzy shapes before her... a gloved hand on the gearshift, pulling it swiftly down. Erik's hand... Erik... and she looked up, over, and he was there, mask on, hat on, eyes on the road, serious.

The car, the same opulent black A8 he always drove? ...it dropped into a higher gear again, and surely they were going very, very fast now... she recalled something he'd said once about 12 cylinders and embarassing gas mileage... and bulletproof tinted windows. And now, focused a bit more, she wondered about where they were driving so quickly, and if they were being followed... Raoul, Agent Kahn, the FBI? The opera house seemed years behind her.

The car veered right, sharply, Erik spinning the wheel and pulling up on the parking brake, then dropping it, straightening the car, and accelerating with such speed that they flew forward. It pressed her into the seat, backwards, into the embrace of the leather cushions, her head pushed back, and she slipped into sleep again.

**XXXXXXXXX**

Christine wanted to dance, or, possibly, to dream like this, dark and weightless, forever. She staggered, leaning forward, as far as she could sway on tip toes, diving into the supporting dark before her, caught each time. Erik's voice intruded, gently, she must stand up, stand still, just for one moment, darling.

And then clearly, with false joviality, she heard him say, "It's my fault entirely, you'll have to pardon me - I'm afraid she had a bit too much to drink in the lounge!"

She curtsied like a lady, because it seemed the thing to do, and found herself giggling furtively. Everything around her was unfrightening but meaningless; she saw shapes and people without really seeing them. She rose out of her curtsy into relevé, third position, and thought for a moment that she might like to try a jeté or two; she hadn't danced much, not since she'd left the corps de ballet for her career of singing. And weeping. And talking to FBI agents. And feeling guilty.

She closed her eyes again, and it was better. She thought again to try her grand jeté, so she stepped forward, and started to raise her arms... only to feel hands bring them down by her sides, then an arm holding them there, supporting around her waist, walking forward, quickly.

"Later, angel, you can dance, I promise you. Just not right now..." Erik's voice whispered in her ear. She heard the words, but her mind was already dancing again on its own, soaring, black starbursts before her eyes...

**XXXXXXXXX**

...and oh, god, her head hurt. She felt his hand brush the hair off her face and tuck it behind one ear, and he said, softly, "Drink this." A bottle of water pressed to her lips, and she tried to drink but her throat burned, and she gasped.

"Please..." Erik said quietly, "You're dehydrated. You will feel ill if you don't..." and she drank, despite the sting with each swallow of water, because at least he knew what was happening.

**XXXXXXXX**

Darker still. Each bob of her head a shadowy fireworks display., refracted and recursive. Each time her mind spun it seemed to amplify, the world spinning within itself.

Then there was nothing, for a while.

**XXXXXXXX**

The dull roar filled her ears.

It was all around her head, like a fierce noise heard from far away... or like a blow dryer in the next room. Something was hissing, closer, air blowing.

The hangover-like headache was mostly gone, but her mind felt strangely empty. She couldn't remember - couldn't get her eyes open for more than half a second at a time, then they'd fall shut again. Everywhere she'd been, she couldn't remember how she'd gotten there or where she'd been before, each place bluring into the next as she tried to sequence them.

Before now was a blur. But what about now?

She was lying down. She was bound - no, it was a seat belt. She felt the buckle, under her folded hands. Her fingers crept out, feeling a soft blanket over her. Erik had kept a cashmere throw in the car for her, said he couldn't chance the air conditioning harming her throat. Sometimes Christine wondered if he kept it there because he enjoyed cosseting her in it, wrapping the blanket around her as a substitute for his arms... but she recognized, it was the same blanket, she knew the familiar softness beneath her fingers, and she clenched it in her fists, as if to anchor herself in the awake and the here.

She opened her eyes - focusing was easier now, though the ceiling was further away than she expected. It took her a minute to make out the words illuminated there.

"Fasten Seat Belts. No Smoking."

And she panicked, her fingers grappling for the buckle on the seat belt, trying to get up, her feet kicking the blanket off her, hands finally finding the release mechanism on the safety belt. She sat up and pressed her face to the airplane window to her right, but saw nothing but a midnight sky, stars, clouds below her. She fell, stunned, back into her seat, desperately trying to remember. Looking around, she appeared to be in a small room, perhaps three times the size of her fully reclined seat, almost like a private car on a train. There was a low wall to her left, separating her from the other half of the room, and it, like everything around her, was polished wood, sleek, like the interior of a luxury vehicle, and not at all like the airplanes she'd ever been in.

Christine fought a trapped, frantic desire to pound on the walls and find her way out.

Taking a deep breath, she swung her legs to the side, looking down and noticing for the first time that she still wore the coat, and her costume from Don Juan beneath it... and soft blue slippers upon her feet. The black boots she'd been wearing earlier were set neatly on the floor, and she felt strangely uncomfortable, tended to, helpless.

She stood, and eyed the wall to her left. It seemed to split in the middle, surely this was the way out... she looked back over her shoulder, down at the armrest of her chair. Among a myriad of other buttons, she located one with two arrows pointing in opposite directions, and pressed it. The two halves of the wall began to slide back and recede into the wall, and she turned to leave - and found herself staring at Erik's shirtfront.

Christine fell back, leaning against her chair, for support and he stepped forward, his hands hovering near her face, as though he were about to embrace her - or cover her mouth. He said in an urgent whisper. "Please... please don't scream."

Her eyes widened as she realized he wasn't wearing his white sculpted half mask... but rather some sort of thin, flesh-toned rubber, pressed to his skin as though it were pasted there, rather like a large, contoured band-aid.

She was furious, and powerless, and utterly confused, and she choked back tears and the desire to pound her fists into his chest and finally clenched both hands with her arms by her side and assaulted him with words. "What is going on?" she hissed. "Where are we going? How did I get here?" Christine saw him gathering his breath, preparing to reply gently; she felt a moment of sympathy - until she remembered the ache and soreness inside her elbow. "You drugged me," she said, low and accusing, and more angry than she'd ever been.

"Forgive me..." were Erik's first words, sorrowful, his eyes meeting hers, showing genuine regret.

"No." She said, flatly, raising her voice.

"Please, Christine," he said delicately, "I know you are angry, and have right to be... but, I implore you: please keep your voice low. There is limited privacy here," and he gestured at the room, containing her seat, his, and, she noticed, a door beyond it. "But the walls aren't soundproof."

"Then bringing a captive seems like poor planning," she threw back at him.

"I was hoping to bring you as -" and Erik paused, just a second, and she couldn't tell whether it was sadness or embarrassment flashing across his face. "As a companion," he finished. "This is a first class suite on a commercial airliner, not a prison cell. I know - I know you didn't choose to come here, but I had rather hoped you would like it. Every step of this was planned with your comfort in mind. There is nothing I wouldn't do for you."

"You wouldn't let me make up my own mind! You didn't do that for me!" she whispered angrily.

"You didn't exactly allow me the chance to ask you over champagne after my opera's first performance." His tone hardened, somewhat, controlled anger lingering in his voice. "You set this in motion, Christine, when you revealed onstage my little cast substitution. And long before that, when you met with the FBI agents."

She winced, and he went on.

"You continually failed to give me an answer, and yet you continued to visit me, to call for me, to say you only lived during our lessons."

"If you're about to tell me I gave you mixed signals," Christine glared at him, her voice low and sharp, "let me tell you right now there is no signal on Earth so ambiguous that _kidnapping_ is the appropriate response. Your concept of boundaries is so broken, I don't even know -"

"It's not as though I know either," his voice rumbled at the depths of its register, angry and controlled. "You used to tell me you were happy with your fate in the hands of your angel - and then you fell into some ridiculous 'play' engagement when that boy suggested it, and then he started making your decisions for you. Can you blame me for appropriating his methods? They seemed to work." He looked at her with wounded eyes. "I would have loved to ask you to run away with me in some boring, civilized way. Like a normal man."

"Normal men don't bring suicide doses or date rape drugs in case things don't work out the way that they'd like," she threw at him, her fury fading and frustration growing.

He stepped backward, away from her, his face fallen into a look of horrified shock, the thin, flesh-toned mask drooping. When his voice came, it was thick and low, as though he was struggling to speak over a lump in his throat. "I would never... You cannot possibly think..."

Strange how quickly sympathy could replace her very rightful anger. She pulled at the collar of the coat, wrapping it tighter around her, instincts uncertain. "Even if I trust you, how am I to know? You took me here against my will. I've been unconscious for hours. I don't know anything!"

"You know me..." he said hoarsely. "As much as a girl can know a madman, I suppose... But I had thought, after all this time, you would trust me. That you would have some faith in - in the way I feel about you. I know - I know my face frightens you, I know it's monstrous. How could you think I would - I would - force myself upon you, when I know it repulses you just to take my hand?" His voice was hollow, and grief-stricken at once. "How could you think that?"

His whole posture seemed to draw inward, his words revealing his confidence shattered, and Christine fought a deep, visceral desire to cradle his head in her arms. As if a bit of comfort could cure him, could take back her words and his actions. And she couldn't answer his question.

"It doesn't repulse me to take your hand." Christine finally said, tired and sad.

He looked at her hesitantly, shoulders raised as though in the midst of a silent roar.

"But," she went on, "You forced me to be here. You took away my - my awareness, my ability to choose, or even to know where I am." Hurriedly, impassioned, she pushed the coat off of her and held her arm out for him to see. "You did this to me."

Erik crouched before her, and she thought he was about to ask forgiveness, but his eyes didn't raise to meet hers. Instead he looked at her arm, at the inside of her left elbow, at the faint bruise like a blue fingerprint pressed there. His hands gestured for her to show him, to turn her arm to one side, and then the other, directing her movement without ever touching her, like a cross between a doctor and a ghost.

"I broke your skin," he said, raggedly, "I don't know if you can imagine how much I hate myself for having injured you."

"Stop..." she said wearily. But the tirade of self-loathing that she expected didn't come; he straightened his shoulders, rose up slightly on one leg, and looked up at her.

"I'm sorry about the drugs," he said flatly. "But I had little time and fewer options, and I _cannot_ lose you. Not unless you tell me, honestly, that you don't want me - that you could never care for me. Until you tell me that you really love that boy, and that you're not just going along with his plan. I won't let you be taken as some entitled twit's wife just because you couldn't make a decision about whether or not you wanted to be mine."

His body language belied his hard words; he was lecturing her, but he was still before her on one knee, eyes pleading, and Christine knew he was asking her, again, laying his heart before her. She could say 'yes,' right here, and he would know happiness.

She didn't even know where "here" was.

"What was it?" she asked, and on his questioning glance, continued, "What was it in the syringe?"

He sighed lowly, and rose to his feet, to return to sitting perpendicular to the chair, facing her. "Sodium thiopental. Surgical grade anesthesia to induce unconsciousness, followed by a low dose of gamma-hydroxybutyrate to sustain it and sedate you on the way here. I'm sorry."

She looked at him, trying to see through his clinical tone, trying to judge whether he genuinely regretted taking her by force, or just that he'd hurt her in the process. "Where are we?"

"On an airplane," and here a touch of amusement crept into his voice. "I did mention that earlier. Specifically, it's midway over the Atlantic Ocean. We're on Emirates flight 202, JFK to Dubai."

He paused, as her jaw dropped, before venturing, "I was rather glad that the timing worked out the way that it did - this was the most comfortable of our options. Emirates operates arguably the finest, and certainly the most private commercial first class cabin in the world. I suppose all those oil barons are even more reclusive than I."

The pride in his words was unmistakable - he spoke with the same tone she'd heard a hundred times before, every time he gave her a gift and explained why it was superior to others of its kind. Books, but only a first edition. Jewelry, but only diamonds from mines not staffed by slaves. He could not think himself handsome, so he surrounded himself with handsome things to have pride in. And he wanted to give them all to her. She felt like some unworthy god receiving sacrifices on an alter.

She blinked and returned to the present. Simple questions; good for the sanity, fantastic for avoidance. "What will we do in Dubai?"

"Get on an airplane," he replied plainly. "We'll need to keep moving for the first 36 to 48 hours, depending on how good their attempts to follow us are. A good 6 or 7 hops should be sufficiently hard to track, especially since they were all purchased under different names and credit cards. I've brought a lovely assortment of passports and wigs."

He paused, waiting for her to laugh, and then went on quickly when she didn't. "At some point we stop the rapid flight, and slow our pace. A week here, ten days there, city to city. When they're sufficiently thrown off trail, and when the story is old enough that we're not immediately recognizable from the front page stories, I'll find someplace for us to settle longer term."

She stared at him. "What if I don't want to? To go along without any say about anything? What if I actually wanted to be back in New York with Raoul?"

He eyed her for a minute, seeming to appraise her words, and whether or not they were hypothetical. "If you wanted to, you would say so. Do so. And judging by your actions, I'd say that you seem to want someone else to control your destiny right now. I'd simply rather it be me than that boy."

His words frustrated her, worried her, and yet she couldn't think of a response.

Simple questions, still good for the sanity.

"Won't they just see who bought the tickets?" she asked.

"Even if they do follow the financial trail through the pseudonyms, I've reserved several flights from each destination. My first instinct was to charter a private plane, but that attracts far more attention. Much easier for us to simply vanish in plain sight."

He waited, for a moment, but she said nothing, and he went on, seeming to try and fill the silence, "I suppose to truly blend in we ought to travel in coach, but, even with this mask - I can tell you wanted to ask about it. It's ridiculous, really, up close, just a thick layer of latex glued to the skin. It hurts, and it's terrible, but it attracts so little attention - even with this mask, I can only pass as normal from a distance. So it's best if we're in sparsely populated cabins where half the occupants are wearing silken eye-masks and sleeping in a haze of complimentary drinks anyway. Three cheers for first class."

Erik said the last words wryly, but the hesitant look quickly returned to what she could see of his face. He was waiting for her to argue or sympathize, and she had nothing. Nothing left to say, and no feelings she could easily identify.

"I..." she began, finding her voice suddenly dry, some sort of lump in her throat. "I have to go to the bathroom."

He stood, and looked down at her with an expression she couldn't quite read, something hesitant, and almost worried. Finally, he gestured with his left hand, sweeping it wide. "The door is right there," he said. "Restrooms are up at the front of the cabin. If you'd like dinner, just ask the flight attendant and it will be delivered to the suite."

And it was with the last sentence that Christine could tell, he was terrified. She wouldn't even have to scream for help. She could just quietly tell a flight attendant that she'd been kidnapped. There were probably even air marshals on the flight - Erik was hardly the typical suicide bomber, but she was certain they'd be happy to cuff him right there on the plane, save the day and rescue the captive.

If she was a captive.

"You control the entry like this," he said, pushing another one of the buttons on her armrest.

A portion of the outer wall slid back, smoothly, mechanized, and Christine stared at the open door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I took a few liberties with this chapter - with the exact effects of the drugs (though they're not far off), and also with the exact configuration of the first class cabins on Emirates airlines planes. Generally the two-person cabins are in the middle, and are far less secluded, and the most private cabins along the wall are single-seat only. However, I wanted Christine to have a window to look out of, so, forgive me a bit of artistic license. The flight number's correct, though. :-)
> 
> -Ver


	3. Chapter 3

The weight of his regard was a pressure, nearly tangible, like a hand resting on her back.

And she knew Erik was waiting for her to betray him, or to buy in to his version of this scenario. The abductee would scream for help; the happy companion would simply go to the restroom, tell the flight attendant that yes, the cheese plate would be lovely, and then stroll back to the comfort of the suite, to the man who would be content just to...

He was still looking at her. He'd probably be happy just to look at her forever, she thought, and then her cheeks pricked with shame because she knew he shouldn't have to be.

"Ok," she said, trying to move on, but her voice seemed to come from outside her head, her words too normal for a day so strange. "Dinner might be good. It's been... How long has it been since lunch?"

"Since noon EST? About 18 hours," and here, he looked guilty, having apparently overlooked his detail. "You should definitely eat."

"Probably," she said, somehow still hesitant, eyeing the door. She took two steps towards it and looked back, over her shoulder. "Do you want anything?"

Christine met his eyes and bit her lip at the raw longing so obvious there. Stupid question, stupid girl, she berated herself silently.

"Probably not anything the flight attendant can bring me," he said, finally, his tone tinged with a bit of bitter humor, the sort of self deprecation that normally comes with saying one is absolutely, utterly, and completely screwed.

Her heart shouldn't wrench like this; she was angry with him, Erik had kidnapped her, he'd threatened Raoul, he'd offered up his own heart on a platter a hundred times...

"Ok," she said hurriedly, uncomfortably, and walked out of the suite.

White lights lead to red lights as she looked down the aisle, tracklights along the floor for emergency guidance and Christine thought she'd actually know better what to do if she were clutching her floation-use seat cushion and trudging towards an open door over the ocean. Aside from the rows of doors instead of seats, it looked just like a normal airplane. So the bathroom was probably at the front. She squared her shoulders and started to walk towards it.

"Wait," Erik's voice was filled with some sort of urgent _need_ , it filled her ear so fully that she thought he must be standing right behind her... but when she turned, he was standing just inside the door to the suite. She'd never gotten used to his ventriloquy...

"This might be useful, if you want to change, or - if you need to - if you want to, that is - freshen up," and he quickly thrust forward a small rolling suitcase, trying to cover for the awkward words.

"You packed my things?"

"Actually, I just bought you new ones." His words were flippant, but they couldn't cover his tone, so earnest. "And I remembered your - disaffection, I think, is safe to say - for the shopgirls at Bergdorf Goodman, so I sent to London for these. Hopefully Harvey Nichols will suit?"

Christine couldn't meet his eyes. He was waiting for the answer to his question, searching for some faint bit of praise in her answering, "of course," but she - she couldn't - she -

"The things you buy are always lovely... even if I don't always deserve them," Christine said, deliberately, demurely, de- lost, just lost, and so very tired. "Thank you." And with lowered eyes, she took the suitcase, and quickly strode up the aisle towards the restroom before she could say anything else.

Past the rows of suite doors she found a small standing area, and several lavatories, each marked as unoccupied by a small light, glowing green behind panels of futuristic milky glass. Christine stepped into the first one and swiftly shut the door behind her. She turned the lock, slid the coat off her shoulders, and then, somewhat less burdened, turned herself and fell back against the door, feeling it solid beneath her shoulderblades, head in her hands, exhausted and lost.

But tears didn't come and neither did the feeling of having escaped. She should find a flight attendant, ask for help - she should find an airphone, surely they still had those, didn't they? Insert her credit card and pull the phone out of the wall, call Raoul and tell him... tell him what, really? That she was alive and well and at this very moment not screaming for help because she was...

She didn't even have a credit card, she realized, her purse was probably still back in her dressing room. She lowered her hands from her eyes, and for the first time, looked around. It was unsurprisingly larger and luxer than an average airplane restroom, sleek marble where she would have expected formica. Christine caught sight of herself in the mirror and a laugh, nervous and strange, escaped her mouth as she noticed again that she was still wearing Aminta's costume. She clapped a hand over her lips and stared at herself for a second, then shook her head and went about opening the suitcase.

It was like opening a shopping bag. Each item flattened, wrapped in tissue, tags still attached with the price carefully snipped off. Trousers, blouses, dresses and skirts, all luxurious and slightly more formal than her normal style. There were brands she recognized from runway photos in magazines, and brands she'd never heard of that were probably twice as expensive, each in the right size, a perfect assortment of pieces to wear and recombine in almost any weather, so that she might be comfortable and stylish indefinitely. And she couldn't decide what she thought about that, so she set about opening the suitcase's other compartments.

She felt a row of hard plastic lumps, and unzipped the side pocket to reveal a row of five sunglass cases. They cracked open like resealable eggs, with a different style of glasses in each - sage-tinted aviators, gigantic black Jackie O frames, quick-change identities for a woman on the lam in some modern day film noir. She unzipped the mesh pocket on the suitcase's lid and found several sets of practical but silky and pretty bras and underwear and suddenly felt uncomfortable - even if some shopgirl in London had picked them out, he... he - Erik had folded these bits of satin and put them in the suitcase, thinking that he'd probably never see them again. Or perhaps hoping that he would.

Christine slammed the suitcase shut and whirled to sit on it, drawing her knees up to her chest, hands in fists against her shins. She knew she should not feel guilty; that Erik enjoyed buying this for her, and that he knew he wasn't ever going to be able to buy _her_. She should not feel guilty - and yet anger at herself flared, because didn't he deserve some greater happiness than just having someone who would reluctantly accept his gifts? He deserved some full fledged woman who knew full well that she _wanted_ to be on this plane, but she - she deserved to not be dragged off by force and - and -

"Dammit!" she choked out, throwing her right fist down and back, against the door she leaned on. Pain lanced through her wrist, through her curled pinky finger as it slammed into the door. It felt like relief, and she turned her arm and bent her fist back, exposing the veins as she beat her inner wrist against the wall, muttering "Dammit, dammit, god dammit." She couldn't stop the frustrated tears, but each burst of pain was under her own control. Her shoulders shook, and she felt so angry and helpless.

A businesslike rap sounded on the door, and she drew in a startled breath.

"Excuse me, Miss?" A female voice, faintly accented but polite and dignified. "Are you unwell? Do you need any assistance?"

Christine slowly let out her breath, and replied, "No, I'm quite all right. Just having a bit of trouble with the zipper on my suitcase." How easily the lie leapt to her lips...

"If you do require any help, be certain to push the orange call button and one of us would be glad to assist," the voice came again, professional and routine, and then Christine heard footsteps retreating.

She breathed relief, and was unsure why; she didn't necessarily want to be a prisoner , but she didn't want to see Erik in jail, and she certainly didn't want Raoul and Agent Kahn to catch up to them if it meant Erik would kill Raoul. She knew exactly what she didn't want and had no idea what she did.

Another deep breath, and she stood, trying to return her head, her heartbeat to normal. The mirror above the sink now showed a girl with red eyes and mascara smears. She bent to open the suitcase again, wondering if he'd truly anticipated everything. A tiny train case in light green leather contained a small assortment of makeup, eyemakeup remover, and an italian skin care line in perfect white plastic travel sizes. Of course. She washed her face, grimacing as she splashed the bodice of her costume from Don Juan, and she decided she'd probably been dressed as Aminta long enough.

Christine stared at the clothing options in the suitcase for a while, thinking too thoroughly which message each choice could send, and not really knowing what the weather would be like... well, wherever it was that they would end up. Though it certainly sounded like they'd be in airports for a while. Layers seemed the wisest approach, and so she finally selected a slate blue pencil skirt with a decent amount of stretch so she'd be comfortable, a navy blue silk blouse, a cashmere cardigan in the same color, and a pair of leather ballet flats in a pretty charcoal metallic grey. There was a purse in the bottom of the suitcase, a structured black leather bag with a top handle and a complicated clasp, and she put a powder compact, the hairbrush, and a lipstick inside.

The heavy wool coat still sat rumbled on the floor, and she looked at it angrily, remembering the last time she'd rather unwillingly put it on. It was too warm to wear indoors anyway, she thought, and again with the not dealing, she folded it, flattened it, folded again and pushed it into the suitcase. Her costume from Don Juan, though, would definitely not fit. Finally she just bunched it up and put it under her arm, crushing the petticoats down as best she could, and figured she'd ask Erik what to do with it - he'd had a plan for everything else. Whereas she... she reached into the suitcase, and found the square leather case that hid the biggest and roundest of the sunglasses, tossed them into the purse, pushed down the lid of the suitcase, zipped it shut, and without looking, thinking, any of it, any more, turned the lock, opened the door and re-entered the world.

The steady low blowing roar filled her ears again, the airplane noise making the emptiness of the nightlight-lit room seem more surreal. Every airplane she'd been on before had been full of people; babies crying, flight attendants pushing drink carts, smokers pacing at several hours without nicotine... suddenly taking up smoking sounded like a really nice idea. Little sticks filled with artificial calm, take one out whenever you need it, and get a few breaths closer to death. Not to mention what it would do for her voice - Erik would absolutely kill her. But Christine wondered, hazily, if he would still love her - if she couldn't sing, if she were just whatever part of her was left, when you took away the voice, and...

A footstep sounded behind her, and she whirled around.

A petite, dark haired woman in a khaki uniform with a red hat and white scarf stood there, holding a tray with a coffeepot and cups. "Can I help you, miss?" she said, in the same reserved, polite voice Christine had heard through the door earlier. Christine stared at her dumbly - somehow still surprised to find someone other than Erik and herself existing on this airplane. It seemed so strange that this woman was just having another day at work, her hair in a perfect chinigon, uniform in order, bringing coffee to the billionaires in their tiny suites six miles above the earth, while Christine was a vanished woman in strange clothes who'd just come off of heavy drugs.

And then, of course, Christine realized it must be stranger still that she herself was standing there unspeaking and finally said, in a rush, "Food? I mean, dinner? Could you bring it to my... our... seats?"

The flight attendant nodded. "Of course. I'll bring the menus to your suite shortly. If you need anything else, my name is Samira." She started to turn, and then looked back, eyeing the bundle of tulle and brocade that Christine held. "Was everything all right with your suitcase?" Her tone spoke more of deliberate politeness than genuine concern, but even through the formality of her question, Christine sensed a tinge of ... suspicion?

"It's fine now, thanks," Christine said, caught offguard. She smiled unconvincingly, and spun on her heel to walk away.

The doors in the hallway all looked the same, and she hesitated, trying to remember how far she'd come up the aisle. She stood in front of the third door from the front, took a deep breath, and pushed the button to open the doors.

Erik was sitting down, turned away from the door, staring over his right shoulder at the night sky outside the window. His chin rested against a loose fist, and there - in profile, in a charcoal blazer and a white dress shirt - he looked like an average business traveler. A well-dressed but ordinary man. He shifted his gaze towards her, slightly, raising an eyebrow without raising his head.

"I thought perhaps you'd found a parachute and an escape hatch," he said in a murmur so wry it was brittle, fragile.

"I found dinner," Christine spoke, gently, leaning against the doorway. "Or the promise of dinner, at least. Sorry it took so long... I had a hard time picking out what to wear."

"That's nice of you to say," he replied, as if she were lying to spare his feelings and had genuinely been looking for an escape route. He turned towards her fully, the mask now visible, and gestured at the door. She stepped in to stow the suitcase and costume behind her seat, and he pressed the button to close the door and seal them away from the world again.

Her seat belt sounded loud when she buckled it, in the sudden silence that had fallen over the suite. Erik was acting withdrawn, and she was drained, and both of them seemed to have the sort of relief without peace that she normally found after a few hours straight of crying. Christine felt like she was all out of emotions, synapses too burnt out to fire, or something similar going on in her head.

"You look lovely," he finally ventured, looking down, as though he didn't have the right to say it.

"I look tired," she replied, as if there was any use in contradicting him.

"If you want to sleep, after dinner, you can," Erik said, "I'll take care of everything."

And Christine said, "I know."

Dinner came on dollhouse plates, the tinyness making each course seem all the more gourmet. The flight attendant brought the dishes almost wordlessly, her inquisitiveness seemingly abated.

Christine ate, and felt better. Erik declined the meal.

She didn't know if she'd be able to sleep. But she sat, eyes closed, and tried not to think.

The airplane began to point subtly downward, a slow shift she noticed in her half awake state without thinking about it, until the captain came on the loudspeaker, announcing in three languages that they'd be landing soon. She opened her eyes a bit, and looked at the window, at ocean and perfectly shaped islands below, still far away.

"Christine..." Erik's voice pulled her back from the window. "We'll need to be ready, when we land."

"Ready for what?" she said, trying to read his eyes beneath the fleshtone mask.

"Ready to run," was his matter-of-fact reply. Erik removed another rolling carry-on from beneath his own seat. He opened it, and Christine leaned over to peer in, feeling somewhat nosy. Looking over his shoulder as he rummaged in it, she saw what looked like a few dress shirts and slacks, several dozen large mesh zipper bags in various colors, and -

He snapped the suitcase shut after pulling out one of the mesh bags in yellow, and unzipped the bag to reveal a plaid short-brim fedora, a pageboy-cut hazel brown wig, and two passports. "I think we'll start by being British," he said, "and attempt more complex endeavors only if they're needed."

"I... don't really understand." Christine said, realizing that he hadn't been joking about having a bag of alter egos handy.

"I can speak Russian in a pinch, but my accent's absolute rubbish," he said, bemused, his voice suddenly that of a Londoner, perfectly accented, subtle but unquestionably acceptable as genuine. Almost like a vocal mask, she thought, noting how easily he slipped it on.

He seemed to wait for her to laugh, and then, disappointed, went on, quickly, in his own voice and businesslike again. "You'll need to put on the wig here in the suite, and put the scarf over it - we can't have the flight crew seeing you leave with a different hair color. In the jetway, you'll take the scarf off - as we're walking, no stopping - and before we get to the terminal, put on sunglasses. You'll need to get those out of the suitcase -"

"I put a pair in the purse," Christine said, gesturing at the handbag.

He paused at her interruption, and tilted his head towards her. "Good girl," he said, his voice surprised, approving and Christine wanted to lean into it for a moment, to close her eyes and relish the praise, like she did during her lessons so long ago, hours of singing to finally get a faint compliment from the voice behind her mirror...

"Now, this part is important: We're not going to be able to avoid clearing customs. There are a few airports, poorly designed, where it's possible to sidestep the agents by not leaving the airport and just getting on the next flight - but we've got more to lose by being caught doing something different. Today's passports are good, they'll even swipe fine. Later on, well, we'll deal with that then."

She wanted to ask what that meant, but he went on, lecturing almost, his voice growing confidant:

"We're here for vacation - every time, that's the answer, no matter which country we've arrived in. I'll try not to land us in Syria, it wouldn't be too believable this time of year. But even so: 'Business or pleasure?' Say pleasure. 'Pour raisons personnelless ou professionnelles?' Toujours, 'personnelles. Sur les vacances...' The wealthy do the damnest things for vacation, and that will help us cover for much of this... But you won't need to speak unless they demand it. I can take care of all the talking."

"Ok, Christine said, trying to remember everything, suddenly worried that she'd mess it up, let him down, ignoring the little voice in her head suggesting that "Help, I've been kidnapped," would be universally understood were she to shout it.

Erik glanced out the window. "You should put the wig on now. There are hairpins to hold it in place."

She nodded, and picked it up, trying to pull it on like a ski cap, but her hair slipped out. She spent a few more minutes pushing and tucking hair up under it unsuccessfully, then took the wig off and tried to put her own hair in a bun first, but couldn't get it under the wig. Finally, frustrated, unthinking, she asked, "Do you have a mirror?"

"I don't have much use for them," came his quick, almost disdainful reply, but his voice relented as he went on to say, "But if you'd like, I can have -"

"Could you help me?" Christine interrupted, surprised at how childlike she sounded.

He was startled, and when he finally spoke, his voice cracked, as though there were not enough oxygen in the room. "If you wish," he said.

She passed him the wig and looked at the floor, trying to concentrate on the task at hand, again trying to pin up her own hair. She managed a loose coil at the back of her neck and pinned it. Then, heart thudding, Christine looked over and nodded at him. He rose out of his seat, and closed the few steps between them. She couldn't read his face as he lifted the wig over her head - momentarily encircling her neck with his arms - and scooped the wig under the twist of her real hair, stretching it and pulling it over, down to her forehead, inches away from her at all times, yet all without actually ever touching her.

Christine closed her eyes.

His breathing sounded fluttery, ragged. He spread the fingers of both his hands, and placed their gloved surfaces along her skull, slowly pushing the wig forward, adjusting it up, closer to the hairline, and the ten points of pressure on her head felt like... she didn't know what they felt like. He was touching her - through his leather gloves, through a layer of fake hair, and then she felt his fingertips brush her ear, tucking a few wisps of hair into the wig, putting a few bobby pins in to secure it. And when she opened her eyes he was looking just over her, actually, focused on her forehead. Finally he seemed to have it settled and made eye contact.

"That should work," he said distantly, but made no motion to step away from her. And so she stood, and he stood, inches apart, unmoving. He took a hesitant breath, released it, and then took a deep one, and she could see the new mask wrinkle as he opened his mouth to speak...

A bell sounded, and the seatbelt lights flashed, and he appeared to think better of whatever he was going to say, silently returning to his seat for the landing.

Christine could tell the instant the wheels touched the ground, a few bumps and suddenly the seat beneath her felt more solid, followed by the almost maddeningly slow roll of the airplane to the gate. Finally the plane halted, and the light behind the seat belt sign went out with a chime. She looked at Erik - expecting him to grab the bags, and her, and bolt - but he sat still, hands crossed in his lap, until he noticed her staring and then absently unbuckled his seatbelt, and stood to gather the baggage, without a word. Somewhat baffled, she slung the purse over her shoulder, and reached below her seat to pull out her carry-on. She wedged the boots from her costume into the carry-on with some effort, and then turned to ask Erik about what to do with Aminta's dress, but he was already gathering it up, putting it into what appeared to be a large mailing envelope.

"It's an rather easy way to dispose of things," he said to her questioning glance. "It's addressed for a P.O. Box in Australia, which, I'm sorry to say, rules out Melbourne as one of our destinations. But if anyone's clever enough to find and follow it, they'll be thrown a good sixteen hours off track."

"It just seems too beautiful to gather moths in a post office," she said, somehow sad to see it go.

"If the loss of one dress is the only casualty of this departure," he said darkly, "I will feel quite fortunate. We haven't the luxury of carrying excess baggage, and the risk you being recognized if you wear it is too high." His tone softened. "I designed the dress for you, spent weeks perfecting the thing, but it - it, I can live without."

"I understand," she said softly.

"Good," came his reply, gently. He put the hat on, pulling it as low as possible in the front, and turned towards the door, suitcase in hand... but then slowly turned back to her. She stood with her bag, ready to leave, to follow him... and utterly unable to read the look in his eyes.

"There is," he said, his formal tone unable to disguise the discomfort in his voice, "one additional matter to discuss."

He pulled his hand out of the pocket of his blazer, holding a small blue velvet ring box

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finished at last! 
> 
> A couple of people had asked in the comments, what Christine's motivation was for being in the plot to trap Erik (ie, the Don Juan performance) and what her motivation is to follow Erik now. In ALW, Christine is somewhat passive until the last moment, when she kisses Erik. She says she can't be part of the plot in Twisted Every Way, and yet she goes along with it, she reveals Erik onstage and yet follows him down to the lair and is kind enough to put on a wedding dress once she's there. (True, he's berating her, but she's complying.)
> 
> And so I'm using that as a base for her behavior here. Erik berated her a bit in Chapter 1 (he did say he'd kill Raoul if the boy caught up to them) and she's so exhausted in her life she's letting other people make decisions for her. I also think some of her passiveness comes from not knowing what she wants, or not knowing how to deal with wanting something she's not supposed to - so the interesting part should come when she finally does. 
> 
> Oh, also, to answer another question: this story assumes Erik did kill Buquet and Piangi. Perhaps in self defense, but, I'm not going to explain it away with a "Piangi was only sleeping." Erik is a dangerous, and somewhat unstable man, and Raoul is a dopey but nice, rich, vanilla guy. I think playing down Erik's bad qualities and making Raoul some kind of jerk makes the choice between them far less meaningful.
> 
> As ever, feedback would be lovely!


	4. Chapter 4

She glanced up at Erik, and then down again at the velvet ring box, and knew that he wouldn't be hesitant like this, knew he wouldn't look like he was gathering all his strength to speak if it was just the gift of some decorative bauble inside. Somehow consenting to follow him from flight to flight seemed easy compared to the decision to be his wife...

"I am not asking you to marry me, not here," his voice interrupted her thoughts, slightly aloof, guarded, and she tore her eyes away from the box in his hands to try and read the eyes beneath his furrowed brow. "I have asked you before, when it was all I could do to lift the words to my mouth to speak them, for fear that you would say no. And since you did not give me an answer, I will ask you again someday - and it may be the death of me yet. But not yet. I am not asking now."

The emotion and determination in his litany shook her, but the words themselves were at odds with his hesitant posture and the object he held. She reached for the box, her long-cursed curiosity overwhelming, and he handed it to her without argument. Christine lifted the top to reveal an engagement ring with a diamond so large she thought it must surely be fake, alongside a slender wedding band studded with smaller diamonds. "Then what is this for?" she said, confused.

He lifted the box from her hands, withdrew the rings, and turned it over in his hand, watching it as he spoke.

"I could tell you that it's because in some countries we may visit, a married woman would be safer. And that is not untrue..." but here, he shrugged. "To be honest, though, it's mostly that I had the passports made in pairs, each pair having the same last name. Call it a bit of hubris, or maybe just an embarrassing amount of optimism, but my Plan A had you willingly fleeing the country at my side, with my opera performed to triumph and rest of our lives ahead of us..." he spoke as though he were describing the silly dreams of a child, with a sort of affectionate sadness that struck her far more deeply than his rages ever had.

"I'm sorry..." she said, realizing quite how many of his dreams she had ruined, "About your Don Juan."

Some sentiment she couldn't identify flickered across his eyes, and he went on, "However, that plan hinged on you suddenly realizing some heretofore unknown affection for me and, well..." here he gestured, flippantly, dismissively. "I suppose I really should just be glad that at my age I'm still capable of such boundless, if unfounded, optimism."

She furrowed her brow. He went on.

"Plan B, as you'll recall, was tidy but morbid. And where we are now is, I suppose, some murky middle ground. You have not consented to marry me, nor have you said you would not, and so you shall wear the ring of a bride without being one." He gestured that she lift her left hand, and slid the rings onto her finger without touching her at all.

Such a small thing, and yet it filled her field of vision. His hands, putting a wedding ring on one of hers. Not the simple gold ring he'd said would keep her safe, not anything that she could possibly pretend wasn't a marriage band, disguise or not.

"Don't worry," he said, and she looked up. "This isn't some sitcom. I not going to use this to extract any public displays of affection from you, or to coerce you into hotel rooms with only one bed under the pretense of 'keeping up appearances.' Or anything else so ridiculous."

But Christine's mind was already racing ahead to how easy it would be to fall into this role; would it be any different than pretending to be a pageboy or a diva? Or consenting to a "play" engagement with Raoul?

"I understand," she said softly, and noted the rush of air he exhaled.

"Thank you," came his low reply, sounding more relieved than grateful. He pressed the button to open the suite doors. "Let's go. Everything will move very quickly, now."

.-

Out of the suite, up the aisle, and then she was following him up the jetway, into the airport, taking nearly two steps for each of the ones he took, walking at such a speed that she nearly needed to run to keep up. Scarf off, sunglasses on. Signs for customs pointed them left, down a long glassed-in hallway passing other departure gates, women and men in robes waiting for flights alongside others in suits, dresses.

Down another hallway, and into a room with queues and agents and Erik flashed some sort of paper and they were whisked to the front of the line. He said spoke with a British accent, his head ducked slightly down to the right, the hat leaning low over his face, and her heart thudded, for a moment, that the agent behind the glass would... she didn't know, and then the thud-thud of him stamping their passports and waving them on felt like relief.

Walking away quickly, Erik leaned over her, his arm coming up behind her but coming a centimeter short of touching at her waist, urging her on, and he said, lowly, fondly, "Oh - did I mention that we're diplomats?"

And she wondered what he kept in the little red bag that real diplomats got. And how damn much he'd paid for those passports.

Another continent, and another culture and the airport was like a small familiar ledge from which to view the newness; inside the signs were in a different language, the metal detectors and walls and floors nicer and newer than the airport she'd known in Newark, but it was an airport nonetheless. Outside the windows, though, she saw huge expanses of desert beyond the runways, and far off skyscrapers of Dubai catching the light, their glint nearly blinding.

Erik slowed his pace as they stepped onto a moving walkway, and then, seeing her lagging, stopped altogether. She nodded appreciatively, and tried to catch her breath. Seeing that there was no one within earshot, she asked him, "How do you know where you're going? Did you read up on maps of every airport?"

"Actually, yes." he said, with the first bit of good natured humor that she'd heard from him in months. "But this one in particular I just happen to know."

"What - did you design their opera house too?" Christine said, relaxing somewhat, even though the walkway was still hurtling them forward at a pace far faster than she was accustomed to. "Or just some of those skyscrapers?" She gestured at the distant glass metropolis.

"Only the good ones," he said with a nonchalance that almost made her laugh. "I designed quite a few highrise buildings here in one of the early oil booms. But after the first gulf war, the corporations couldn't afford me, and I found myself designing more for... private clients." His mood seemed to darken, and he shook his head, going on. "I'll see if I can point some of the better towers out to you from the air. We should be taking off to the East, so we'll go right over them."

The end of the walkway was approaching, and Christine took a deep breath, as though she was preparing for a sprint. "Where will we be... taking off... to?"

"If we can get to the gate in the next twelve minutes?" He looked back over his shoulder at her. "Lagos, as Canadians. Hong Kong on Swiss passports in half an hour, if we can't."

He stopped sharply at a mailbox, and took the package containing the Don Juan costume out from under his arm. He slid it into the mailbox, swiftly shut the lid, and then they both walked away from that bit of the past.

.-

Nearly running again, suitcase rolling behind her, people and gates going by in a blur once they rounded the corner into the main terminal and swiftly moved down the center walkway. The glass ceiling soared above her, an atrium atop a shopping mall so grand that the airplanes seemed almost an afterthought. She was wondering if the palm trees indoors were real or not, when Erik gestured out the window at a particularly large plane. "That's ours; we'll wait until they're finished boarding coach and then get on right before they close the jetway."

The splashy logo on the side of the airplane and cheerfully suited flight attendants she could see up ahead at the gate seemed so much in contrast to Erik's normal taste. "We're flying Virgin?" she asked, perplexed by his sudden tolerance for cheeky wit.

"I'm not without a sense of humor," he said dryly. "I thought the name was rather appropriate, actually."

"Look," Christine interjected, her voice choppy as she strode to catch up with him, "Would you stop it? I'm tired of the self deprecating jabs. 'Unfounded optimism'? Do you sit at home and think these things up, then whip them out to make me feel bad? You want me to love you and all you do is talk about hating yourself!" She stopped walking, but stopped just short of her desire to stamp her foot like a child. After a moment of floundering, she slammed the handle down on the rolling suitcase, crossed her arms and waited for him to respond.

She expected an argument, or perhaps to be told to hush, to not attract attention - and so it came as a bit of a surprise when he swiftly pulled her into his arms. In a second he had stepped sideways into a corridor off the main terminal, and twisted around, pulling her up against the wall, his whole body encircling her from behind. She gasped, startled, and his arms lifted quickly, as though he'd been singed. But she made no movement to step away, and finally his hands came to rest on her shoulders, tentative, but firmly holding her in place.

"Change of plans," his breath brushed her ear as he spoke, his voice low. "Bad weather in Lagos. We'll be going to Hong Kong after all."

"What's wrong?" she asked, trying to turn her head and look at him, but his fingertips on her shoulders were like steel. "Is someone at the gate? Did -"

" _Christine_ ," his voice urged her to silence more strongly than a hand over her mouth. "We have to get to gate 34, and without attracting any attention. I need you to walk forward, back out into the main hall; get your suitcase, and walk, briskly but unhurried, back the way we came. I'll catch up to you when you pass that glorified shopping mall. Whatever you do, don't look back. Can you do that?"

The words filled her ears but barely registered, the tone and beauty of his voice threatening to overcome her just as it had in her early days of following her teacher's every order. The people bustling through the airport seemed to swim in the distance; she closed her eyes, and said, "Yes."

The pressure of his fingertips vanished from her shoulders, and she hesitated, waiting for further instruction. But the air was empty, his voice did not come again, and after a moment she wondered if he was still behind her. _Don't look back_ , he had said, and suddenly his cries from nearly 6 months before echoed in her ears - _Don't look at me! -_ and she shuddered, remembering the feeling she'd had, apple and Eve, standing there with his mask in her hand.

It was so much easier to be in his thrall when she couldn't see him. Give in and slip under, the relief of letting him lead, submerging herself in the beauty of his voice and forgetting about any details to the contrary.

And yet she wanted to look back; to see if he was there; to ask what the hell was going on; to clear the trance from her head and talk to him honestly.

It was so much easier to be in his thrall, period. And Christine trained her eyes on the colorful bustle at the middle of the terminal, stepped out to grab her suitcase, and strode off in the direction he'd sent her. She kept her head high and her eyes distant, but all the while her mind was desperate to know what scene was unfolding at the flight they hadn't boarded. Or maybe no one was there at all, and this was a test. She reached the first of the shops and tried to glance in a mirror as she passed - not breaking his order to not look back, but hoping for a glimpse of what was going on.

The scene reflected in the silvered shop window was too distant and crowded to see anything back at the gate, but she nearly stopped short when she caught sight of herself, her clothes and haircolor foreign and half her face obscured by the giant sunglasses. She didn't know whether to gawk at how nice the clothes were, or at how mutable her appearance was. The sandy brown hair of the wig curled under at her chin, tickling, irritating, and she tucked it behind her ear - noticing the sparkling ring on her hand in the reflection, but before she could reflect on that herself, she saw Erik approaching and remembered that she'd been told to keep walking.

"Almost perfect," he said as he caught up to her. "But next time, don't stop to lache les fenetres."

"I don't even know what that means," Christine said, suddenly feeling cranky and reluctant again at being scolded.

"Sorry." he replied immediately, gesturing with a nod of his head that she should walk with him. Their pace was deliberately slower, just an average couple walking to their departure gate, and he went on "The phrase is French for 'window shopping', but it literally means 'lick the windows' - which has interesting implications about the Gallic relationship with fashion and conspicuous consumption, not to mention desiring the unattainable. But I digress, and you've got sufficient funds in the pocket of that purse to buy every pricey bit of jewelry in that store. So perhaps the phrase was malapropos; I apologize."

"There wasn't..." and then Christine unzipped the handbag and saw a small wallet she hadn't seen before. "You put money in my purse?"

"While we were still on the plane; yes. Don't look indignant, it's spending money, not a bribe. It would look odd if you had to ask me for money every time you wanted to buy a cup of coffee, and if something should happen to me, you'll need the means to keep running." His tone was as casual as his walking speed, so confidant that she nearly glossed over his words entirely.

"Need to keep running?" she asked, stopping short again.

"The gate's just up ahead," he said, gesturing. "The jetway docks in the middle on the larger Airbuses, meaning first class turns left and coach turns right, so we can board early without having to worry about the entire plane staring us down as they trudge back to their seats."

"Don't be a snob," Christine replied, "it's one thing to like nice things, and another to look down on people who don't have them - and you're changing the subject. What did you mean, when you said -"

But his anger was quick, and controlled, as he hissed, "I've been looked down on - and worse - for 40 odd years, Christine. You'll pardon me if I have little empathy for the masses. If I surround myself with 'nice things,' it's because they're the only comfort I've ever had."

"I know your life hasn't been easy," Christine said slowly, her words approaching him hesitantly. "But it's just that... "

But she had nothing, really - no good response, and the issue seemed to have drifted far from coach vs first classism. And her earlier anger had kind of fizzled.

"Nevermind, I'm sorry," she said, energyless, apathetic and somewhat sullen. "If it was so important that we get to the gate, shouldn't we get going? Or should I go see if Raoul's followed us and is waiting back at the other gate?"

"He's not." Erik said, disdainful and definitive. "There was a unit of Emirates' Special Police searching passengers boarding the flight, and I didn't fancy the pat-down. Come along; we'll be boarding shortly."

He showed of some kind of silver card to the gate agent and they were jumped to the front of the boarding queue, passes scanned and proceeding to the airplane. Christine smiled and nodded obligatorily at the line of flight attendants, crossed behind the galley, and turned left to go to their seats. She hesitated a moment at the seat, reading the number off her ticket again. She looked over at Erik, who was maneuvering his suitcase into the overhead compartment as if nothing were wrong.

"Are these the right seats...?" She asked finally.

"Yes," he replied, hushed as he looked over his shoulder at passengers walking up the other aisle. "Unfortunately few airlines provide the kind of seclusion in first class that our last flight 'll get wraparound curtains here and there, but for the most part it's just these sort of pod chairs with a bit of a plastic wall extending out from the headrest in the name of privacy."

"Well... I'm sure it'll be fine..." Christine said lamely, not really certain why, or what would be 'fine'.

"It has to be, if any of this is to work." He pressed his hand to the beige latex on his right cheek, a faint anxiety entering his demeanor. "Although, if you wouldn't mind, my taking the window seat would allow for a little less... exposure."

"Oh - of course," she replied awkwardly, getting her purse out of the seat where she'd tossed it. He nodded appreciatively, and swiftly sat down, taking only a moment to settle into the chair before turning to his right in a fixed stare; seemingly looking out the window, but also silhouetting his face such that only the good side could be seen to someone walking up the aisle. She wondered how often he'd practiced that, or if he'd just learned it instinctively.

A man in a green blazer leaned over Christine's shoulder, holding a tray filled with champagne flutes, and said something to her in ...Chinese? She smiled nervously, not sure how to respond. Their passports for the Hong Kong tickets were Swiss, Erik had said. In Switzerland they spoke... German? French?

The flight attendant nodded understandingly at her silence. "Do you speak ... English?" he asked, finally. "Would you like champagne before takeoff?"

"A little," Christine lied, and then hastened to add, awkwardly, "A little ... English. No champagne. Thank you."

"Sir?" the flight attendant gestured towards Erik.

"No, thank you," he replied, not rudely, but not encouraging conversation.

"I'll return with more choices once we're in flight," the flight attendant replied helpfully. "Do you wish that I take your hat and coat, and hang them for you?"

There was a pause, and Erik's shoulders seemed to stiffen in his . "I'll keep the jacket. But I suppose you're right; a gentleman doesn't wear a hat indoors," he said cooly, and turned towards him, removed the brown, plaid, short-brim fedora he'd been wearing, handing it over like a gun in a standoff. The attendant took it, but didn't move away, staring curiously at the blank beige mask. Erik's shoulders were set, his stare steady, and finally the uniformed man blinked and said, "Thank you, sir," and hurried away to hang up the hat.

Erik turned wordlessly and leaned back in his chair, looking away from the aisle in full now, and the airplane began to slowly move in reverse, overcoming the incredible inertia of a half-million pound object at rest. Christine was aware of the flight attendants going through the motions of showing exits and oxygen masks, and of the engines whirring up, rumbling to life, but her eyes were on Erik, trying to read his posture, to see if he was angry or bristling at the intrusion or upset, or...

It was the noise she noticed first, a deep, low, squeak, if there could be such a thing, and she looked over to see the source of the sound - and saw Erik's fingers gripping the side of the chair with such tension that she expected the leather-covered armrest to burst in his hand. And she was quite certain that it wasn't fear of flying jitters, and it wasn't anger, and he must have dealt with people staring at him like that every damn time he'd ever ventured out of his house and -

She loosened her seat belt, and leaned over, and laid her right hand on his left arm, reassuringly, and it came so naturally that she jumped, surprised, as Erik whipped his head around to look at her tiny hand resting on his sleeve. But she didn't let go, and said, "Erik..." imploringly, as she moved to stroke his arm, trying to calm him - only to pull away, as she felt a wetness beneath her hand, and turned her palm up, stained red, and she realized his sleeve was drenched with blood.

"Please don't pass out," he said dryly.

But she was already hyperventilating and staring, horrified at the splash of red on her hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is my first time writing any kind of action - if you've read any of my other stories, you know I tend to just stick the characters in a room and let them be emotional at one another. I guess having an extended chase scene is exactly the opposite of that. :-)
> 
> As always, feedback good or bad is much appreciated, and is the fuel that helps me update sooner.


	5. Chapter 5

The heavy howl of the engines grew louder, approaching a high pitched whine just before the plane shot down the runway, moving from a standstill to takeoff like a slingshot. Christine fell back in her seat, plunked down by gravity as the plane escaped it, but her focus was narrowed to the blood that stained her palm.

"What is... are you ok? Are you going to be ok?" She couldn't slow her frantic respiration, couldn't understand the heart-gripping fear or the sudden presence of blood that had prompted it.

Erik's eyes widened somewhat at her wild panic, but his gaze didn't once lower to his own arm and apparent injury, it just remained steady on her, studying for a second and then soothing, as he voiced a soft hushing sound, deeper than a simple "Shhh", and it silenced her entirely. "Breathe with me," he said, his voice still low, "As we did in your early lessons."

Her posture was wrong for singing, to say nothing of their location, but she suspected that singing wasn't his intent. She drew a steady breath when he did, and attempted to hold it until he released his own, but let it out in a puff too soon. He said nothing and so she tried again as he inhaled with impossible slowness, and she looked not at his eyes anymore but straight at his chest, watching for it to fall, and after several minutes felt herself relax into the pattern he set, her agitated pulse returning to normal. Her thoughts still raced - he was hurt, and they were trapped on this airplane for the next seven or eight hours - was there a doctor aboard? Would Erik allow someone to treat him? What if it wasn't his blood at all - had he fought someone while he'd sent her away from the first plane in Dubai?

"I meant it in jest when I asked you not to pass out," he said gently. "But I'll have to watch my sarcasm. Keep your voice very low. Here," and with his right hand he reached inside his blazer and withdrew a square of navy blue silk. "There should be a bottle of water in the amenities bag that was on your seat when we boarded, the one with the slippers and magazines. Wet the handkerchief and clean up."

Christine did as best she could to wipe away the red, and tried to stay calm, eyeing around her surreptitiously to see if any passengers had taken note of the girl quietly washing blood off her hands, but the occupants of the cabin seemed to be oblivious. She finally looked back to Erik and whispered so forcefully that it was barely a question at all, "Why is there blood on your sleeve!"

"Your dear childhood friend shot me. If you recall." There was none of the normal sneer as he referenced Raoul, just a strange emotionless statement of a fact, as though it were normal to have been shot at. He looked down at his arm, judging the injury as dispassionately as an insurance inspector, but his tone sharpened as he went on, "I would criticize his marksmanship for a supposed member of the nobility, but it's not the first time he's fired a gun at me and I must admit, his aim is improving. Though I could murder him for sending a bullet so close to you."

"You'll have to add that reason to the list," Christine said dazedly, and his low chuckle barely registered in her ears. "I'm sorry - and wait, he's shot at you before? And you said it was just a scratch - you told me you were fine!"

"I also told you I was an angel," he said with a smile that bent into a grimace. "I'm sorry; I would have said pretty much anything to get you moving, I needed you to come with me."

"Why didn't you just chloroform me right there on that stuntman cushion when we fell? You could have saved yourself an argument and the trouble of making up a few lies," she said, her anger quiet but resurgent.

"Because chloroform is a carcinogen, and more importantly, it doesn't work like in the movies -" he started, and on the raging look she shot him he hastened to add, "but that's not why. I wanted you to choose to come with me. To be with me. It's... it's all I've ever wanted, and I know I've started out wrong every time; I've lied and mislead you and I'm prepared for a lifetime of asking forgiveness. Just to have that chance to do so - to bring you an apology and a cup of coffee each morning - Christ, I would take it."

Her anger broke and receded at the fervent humility in his tone. Their eyes locked for a moment; her posture relaxed, and he went on.

"I don't want you to be upset with me, and I know there are many things we'll need to discuss... But right now I'm apparently bleeding a bit more than I'd hoped, and I'd like to take care of it before it becomes a class two hemorrhage. Fair?"

Her stomach lurched at the word "hemorrhage" and she lowered her face into her hands and nodded. "Yes. Of course."

The seat belt light chimed off as the plane's climb leveled, and Erik pressed the buckle and slowly stood, walked around her chair and opened the overhead compartment to rummage in his bag for a minute. She saw him slip several things in the pocket of his blazer, and then he casually stepped forward to walk up the aisle to the restroom. But he stopped sharp, and staring at his back, Christine thought she saw the slightest shake of his shoulders, before he slowly turned back to her. He leaned over, and when his voice came it was hesitant and emotion drenched.

"Thank you... for trying to... Thank you, for your hand on my arm." and without staying for her response, he turned swiftly and proceeded up the aisle.

She bowed her head, wondering if anyone had ever comforted him before, and feeling wretched for every time she'd seen him unhappy and been too indecisive, too afraid of how her actions might be interpreted, too uncertain herself of what her feelings were, to do a damn thing. Christine watched him make his way towards the front of the plane, his normally light and graceful gait uneven, and it suddenly occurred to her that he must be in an enormous amount of pain. And Raoul had caused - no. She had caused this wound.

She heard the clink of her seatbelt unbuckling and was on her feet before she'd realized what she'd done, suddenly uncaring of attracting attention, and Christine flew up the aisle behind him, reaching the door of the restroom just as he was pulling it shut behind him and without thought or plan she grabbed the door, wrapping her fingers around the edge and winced in anticipation. But the door did not slam on her hand - it stopped short, and then slowly swung outward and she was faintly aware of Erik saying her name in a baffled voice, but she didn't bother with explanation because she had none, and so she wedged her right shoulder in and he let go of the door altogether. She pushed, and stepped into the bathroom, sliding between Erik and the sink he was facing, and he let out a soft hiss that turned into a gasp, leaning forward as though he couldn't breathe from the shock, as her hipbones slid past his own, her pencil skirt pressed to the front of his unpleated trousers in the tiny restroom space.

Instantly, he leapt back, but even in a first class lavatory, there was only half a foot of space to retreat from her in. Christine reached over and locked the door, then half sat on the edge of the counter and returned her attention to him, gesturing that he should come closer. "I'm going to help," she said with a determination that surprised her, "You're left handed, you can't stitch up the wound yourself. You need me to help and you won't ever ask."

The laugh that escaped from under the mask seemed almost more at himself than at her, as he stood still breathing heavily, her proximity seemingly thrilling and terrifying him as he tremblingly leaned towards her and then away. "If I had known," he said at last, "that I would have such a nurse, I would have shot myself six months ago."

"Don't say that!" Aghast and impassioned she reached for the pocket of his coat. "Do you have matches so I can sterilize the needle? There's probably a smoke detector in here, though..." he initially flinched at her reach and then lifted his hands like a fugitive caught in a spotlight, letting her look inside the pocket of his blazer. She withdrew not the peroxide, needle and thread she expected, but rather a rolled, rubbery bandage.

"This is less an issue of stitches, and more the need of a tourniquet, I'm afraid," he said, lowering his arms to his side. "The bullet missed the brachial artery, but blood loss is the main concern. A tight wrap and a fresh dressing should stabilize me until we can get a little further out and have sufficient lead to stop for a while."

"You don't even know how bad it is," Christine said, and reached for his blazer again, this time pushing it off his shoulders, and again he flinched, but she ignored it and pulled his right arm out of the sleeve. Her movements were the most confidant she'd been in months, and she felt almost professional, clinical, as though she were genuinely nursing him, as though she genuinely knew what he hell she was doing, as she gently lowered the jacket, as wide as she could, from around his left arm.

All thoughts of professionalism fled as the explosion of red on his dress shirt came into view and she felt herself pale, her head light. The sleeve was drenched with blood but undamaged; he had clearly bandaged his own arm and changed shirts since being onstage for Don Juan, probably during her long drugged sleep. "We need to get this shirt off you," she said, with a deep breath, and she reached for the buttons without looking up at him, trying to regain the feeling of confidence she'd had earlier. He stood still, motionless to the point of seeming frozen as she rested her forearms on the cool surface of his chest and worked the button at his collar open, and the one below and it was only as she reached the third one that she noticed the incredible silence - was he holding his breath? She finally looked up at Erik and he exhaled from somewhere deep within him, his eyelids, shoulders and posture altogether falling as the air left his body, and he unsteadily swayed for a minute, before finally leaning forward and bracing himself with his right arm against the wall behind her. His chin dropped down, and she could feel his breath, warm against the top of her head, her scalp tingling.

"You are going to give me a heart attack," he murmured raggedly, in a tone that suggested he wouldn't entirely mind, but it brought her hands to a halt as she realized exactly what she was doing - standing closer to him than she ever had, nearly tearing the clothes from his body.

She blushed, deeply, and ducked her head, muttering a soft, "I'm sorry," as she realized her hands were still gripping his half-open shirt. The flush to her cheeks deepened into shame as she realized how she must be affecting him - how badly his must want to feel her hands on him - dear god, undressing him. But probably not like this.

"There's a..." and he blinked, and rolled his hand a few times, gesturing, before the word seemed to come to him, "...bit of gauze, and tape, in the coat pocket. I can wear the same shirt, until we land, but we should probably rinse the blood from the jacket." His voice was gaspy and uneven, the words broken like a man out of breath.

"Ok..." she said, glad to have orders to follow, and bent to get his blazer from the floor, as he hesitantly continued unbuttoning his shirt, one handed. She tried to think of something comforting or useful or something to say, but the air was warm and artificially scented and the light fluorescent and dear god she was tired and -

A sharp rap sounded at the door.

"Excuse me... sir and madam. There is to be only one person in the lavatory at a time."

Christine looked to Erik, uncertain whether to be embarrassed or afraid to leave him alone. Erik, however, nodded at the door. "I would not have minded your help... but I can do this," he said.

"I don't want you to bleed to death!" she whispered, with a ferocity that seemed to send her heart out into the air, just behind the words, before snapping it back again.

"And if I were somewhat less distracted by this pain, I would rejoice those words, my dear, thank you." He leaned over her again, his head bent perpendicular such that he talked to the top of her ear and she stared at his shirtfront. The sickening red had begun to spread from his sleeve to his chest, and she closed her eyes. "But even if I am to bleed to death, I'd rather do it in a five star hotel than in some questioning area at the airport for disobeying a flight attendant. And since I suspect you'd rather I not dispose of him at 36,000 feet, you'd probably better get back to our seats."

"Ok," she said reluctantly, and moved towards the door. Erik stepped back and nodded at her, and she couldn't tell whether he was granting her permission to leave or telling her he'd be ok, but she opened the door and slipped out, coming face to face with the flight attendant from before, along with an older woman who appeared to be waiting for the restroom with a scornful look on her face. Christine ducked her head - knowing what they must be thinking - and knowing it was better than them knowing the truth. "Sorry," she said with a smile of fake embarrassment but she was stunned by the next words that came from her mouth. "We're newlyweds."

A loud thump sounded from within the restroom, and Christine looked over her shoulder, concerned, but no further noise came.

She continued to smile apologetically, and then turned to leave. The woman crossed her arms, her disapproval unrelenting, but the flight attendant looked as though he were merely amused, and walked down the aisle with her, his English still formal, but tone far more friendly. "I'm sorry madam, but it is a rule. And my congratulations on your marriage. Are you sure you would not like champagne?"

"Actually," Christine said, rubbing her forehead, the gigantic wedding ring catching her eyes as much as his, "that'd be nice. Thank you."

She fell into her seat and sat uncomfortably. She fumbled with the buttons on the chair and put the footrest up, then immediately dropped it - Erik would have trouble walking around it to his seat. After a minute of staring anxiously up the aisle at the restroom door, she remembered - seat belt - and fastened it. The proffered champagne came, and Christine drank it, gratefully. The attendant replaced her empty glass with a full one, and with quick sips she nearly drained it, her anxiety failing to fade, and Erik still did not return from the lavatory. She was wondering if another would help, when Erik finally emerged from the restroom, swiftly strode towards her, and took his seat.

"Make sure you drink enough water; the dehydration seems to compound with each additional flight," Erik said, gesturing towards her glass.

"Sure..." she said, "Are you..?"

"I'll be stable for 10-12 more hours, I think."

"Ok," she said, settling into her chair, relief and champagne buzzing at last, the tense hunch of her shoulders unwinding. "I was... worried."

"I know..." he said slowly, "even if I don't know how to believe it." The bewilderment and and near reverence in his voice rang through the air, clear and pure, and Christine wanted to just hear him happy like this, and not think about tomorrow. The moment fizzled and vanished he went on, his tone quickly covered by his typical light, biting humor. "But it appears the only fatality today will be my blazer - I soaked the sleeve and rinsed it as best I could, but that's a hell of a thing to do to a Kiton suit."

Christine raised an eyebrow, "Complaining about your dry cleaning makes you seem far less dangerous. You'd better not let word get out."

He smiled, the latex mask crinkling at the edge of his mouth, but such lovesick affection and hope in his eyes that she thought she'd stutter if she tried to speak. A long moment, and then his answer came. "I'll trust you to keep my secrets Christine. Quite honestly, I'm glad to have such a prosaic problem. And Kiton is litter compared to Saville Row - at some point this trip will bring us to London, and we can stop for a bit. I shall have a new suit made, and you - you can have anything you want. I'll get a hotel suite and we'll hold court in the living room, I'll have the best boutiques send over every purse of the season. Pick a designer - I'll get them to come and tailor a dress for you."

"Erik," she demurred, "I don't need anything. You spent too much money on the clothes you already gave me - I know those brands are expensive. I liked the songs you gave me, back in New York, that's a good sort of present."

He shook his head. "Each time I hear you say my name, I want to give you the entire bloody planet."

Christine knew without looking that his gaze was full of love for her; he was heartened by her display of nursely affection, and why shouldn't he be? Why shouldn't she let him be? She looked down, unable to respond, uncertain of what she would do if she met his eyes again. The buoyance of his mood seemed to dissipate and settle over them both like fog, worsening with each second that she stared, uncertain, unknowing, but not unfeeling, at the ground.

"...Not that it would do any good," he finally said, and turned away from her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oddly enough, this story is being mostly written in airports and on airplanes - they do say write what you know. That being the case, the lags between updates are just when I haven't had a trip in a while. Looks like my travel schedules pretty booked for the next few months, so I should have plenty of time and inspiration to write.
> 
> A couple of people had asked how Erik was wounded, and hopefully it's clear after this chapter - but if it's not, go back and read the beginning chapter 1 again. If it's not clear after that, then it's my fault as a writer, let me know:-)
> 
> Many thanks, as always, to my readers and especially to my wonderful reviewers. I take each bit of feedback seriously, especially the constructive critiques. Please do review, even if it's just to say hi - knowing that there are readers eager for an update is what motivates me to write instead of just sleeping or reading a magazine on the plane!


	6. Chapter 6

_Dubai to Singapore; 3600 miles, 8 hours._

_Singapore to Manila; 1480 miles, 3 hours_

_Manila to Tokyo; 1800 miles, 5 hours._

...It began to feel like a dance.

Deplaning, rushing through customs with yet another set of counterfeit credentials that were quickly disposed of; a red wig, a black one, sunglasses and scarves for her and an assortment of hats for him. Pulling on a jacket - throwing away a long clip-on ponytail in an airport bathroom - Christine was reminded of the children's books with pictures of characters divided into thirds, each part lining up, a football helmet atop a ballerina's body with a mermaid's tail. Swap out another part of herself and take hold of a document that proclaimed her identity for the next hour or so.

There was mostly silence, between them. Erik gave her directions; the gameplan still entirely in his control and moreover, his head; she rarely had instructions for more than the next ten minutes ahead of her. Each instruction was carefully formulated; not curt, but mostly without warmth. He was businesslike - if there were such a business as prolonged law-evasion via international jetting - and she was quiet and mostly acquiescent. She was not unhurried, not unstressed, not unworried... but not unhappy either. It was out of her hands, and her job, it seemed, was just to keep up and she felt capable of it; it was easy enough to do, if not to understand.

Deplaning in Tokyo, she trod down the jetway, feet starting to ache from the perpetual swell and shrink of being onboard the plane, purse slung over her shoulder, suitcase trailing in her left hand, and she didn't bother to look at him for instruction; another passport, another scarf over her hair to dispose of later. The sunglasses, she kept each time.

But the plan was still his.

"We'll be transferring terminals this morning," he said lowly, casually, steering her with his words. As always, he removed the sim card from his phone, subtly folded it until it snapped, then dumped the pieces into separate garbage cans and replaced it with a new one. Then he turned left, not going toward customs.

And so Christine followed, as always. They walked in a scattered group of perhaps five percent of the previous plane's occupants, each of them forking off in different directions to begin long walks to connecting flights. Erik slowed his pace somewhat, almost hanging back, and Christine fell in line behind him, each step seeming to lag interminably after so many hours of racing through airports. The last of the previous passengers turned a corner ahead of them and Erik resumed the normal breakneck pace again, walking brisk steps down the long hallway.

"It's very empty", she said, looking around and feeling alone for the first time in hours, or days.

"It's very early," he said, glancing back, "and no one will be on the domestic flights to Osaka or Hokkaido for another three hours. The frequent flyer lounges won't be open for another two. It is somewhat out of place that we're here, so we need to hurry."

Another hallway opened up ahead of her, an opalescent tunnel with futuristic white plastic walls so perfectly shiny that the scuffed floors seemed like an insult. They reached the first of the moving walkways that dashed the corridor and she stepped on and rested for a moment, rolling her neck and watching the orbs of the lights above reflected jaggedly in the floor, a line of glowing dots stretching off into the distance, then she jogged to catch up, the suitcase pulling jerkily behind her.

More walking, another horizontal escalator, but up ahead she could just barely see a blue glow, so faint, but lovely. As they got closer it seemed to seep out, infiltrate the light all around her, and color it entirely, and then as the walkway passed by she realized - it was daylight, a tiny bit of foggy blue morning glow amidst the awful hours of fluorescent. She could almost feel the coolness and the damp of the world outside and she realized that she had felt dried out and tired for days.

Christine scanned the gaping expanse of tunnel ahead, looking for more of the pale blue glows, but before she could see much further Erik turned sharply at the end of the moving walkway and walked left, away from the rest of the airport, towards the window where a single door was blocked off with construction tape.

"This way, if you will," he said, unsticking the tape and gracefully gesturing for her to proceed through the door. She looked at him, waiting for instructions, half reaching for the handle.

"Yes, it should be open, turn it quickly, please." He replied.

She pushed it open and stepped through slowly, pushing the suitcase ahead of her, looking back over her shoulder at him for some kind of indication as to what she should be doing, here, but he was already coming through the door, and pulling it shut behind him so swiftly she imagined for a moment it was magnetically attracted to his hand.

She stood, watching him watch the door close silently and step forward just as his head turned to face her - and, as she hadn't moved, he collided into her, his shoulder and chest jolting against her back. She stumbled forward a half step and swiftly he shot his right arm out to grab her waist, preventing her from falling further - his palm landed on her hip but immediately jumped away as if burnt.

"Pardon," he said quickly.

Even though a layer of coat and pants, she had felt the pressure of each of his fingers splayed across her hipbone, and it felt simultaneously reassuring and - and -

"Where do I go?" she asked.

He was looking down and flexing his hand as though he was shaking some pain away, then blinked a few times, and replied, "Left, please, through the door, down the stairs, and straight into the hallway at the bottom then right," as calm and as warmly as if he were an usher showing the way to a box back at the Opera.

She nodded, and headed the few steps to the next door, but the knob wouldn't turn, and there was no card reader to swipe or keypad on which he could enter a code. She heard Erik swear, sharply, and she was about to ask him what to do, but he was already brushing by on her right, reaching for the lock with a credit card in his hand.

"I'll have to do this one the old fashioned way," he said, as though it were tacky and tiresome, and abruptly threw his good shoulder against the door while sliding the card between the doorframe and the lock.

Christine felt her brow furrow, and the omnipresent anxiety gain a foothold and creep in. "Erik... are we..." She turned her head to look at the door behind them, her pulse suddenly uneasy.

He raised his finger to his lips. "Just a moment, please, I have to listen to hear if the edge catches. I'd rather not have to get the full lockpicking set out." Then he returned to the door, trying the credit card at various angles in silence, until he apparently heard what he was looking for, and sharply jammed the card in with his left hand, pulling the door knob with his right, and the door swung open. He started down the stairs without a word, but at the first landing, looked back at Christine, where she still stood at the top.

"Do you need help with your bag?" he asked.

"I don't think we're supposed to be here," she finally offered up.

He nodded slowly, seeming to gauge her, and said hesitantly, almost a question more than a statement, "Let me assure you - we're not. But we won't be here long."

"It's just... if we run into someone, will you have to... will you have to kill them? I just... I can't." She was shaking her head, as though she might be able to shake out the right sentence, but the words weren't coming.

"You're worried _now_?" Erik asked, seeming almost amused. He walked back up the steps to her, stopping one below, and she realized it was the closest they'd ever been to the same height, her eyes level with his mismatched ones. "Did it feel safer before, where we were out in public? I don't know whether to be insulted at your lack of confidence in my abilities or touched that you think I'd be too nobly bound by social mores to eliminate someone in a crowd."

"Stop," she said, and looked up at him angrily. "Just lay off, for a while. I'm exhausted. I'm here, I've cooperated better than you could have hoped for, but this feels... you know what I mean. It feels risky."

"You underestimate my capacity for hope," he said pointedly, "but I respect your unease. I can tell you that there won't be any guards, because we're headed for a portion of the terminal that's under construction and the crews aren't working on a Saturday. And I can tell you that when I choose to, I am certainly adept at incapacitating an assailant using non-fatal means. Does that help?"

"Do I have a choice?" Christine asked, staring at the ceiling, trying to understand the anxiety she was feeling. Was it about the path of havoc that could be wrought in her name, or was it that she didn't want them to be caught, period?

He leaned forward, seeking out her eye contact again, drawing her attention back to him. "Please - please listen. Christine. You can choose to put your faith in me. If you trust my ability to pull this off, and if you believe that I have already analyzed upwards of 20 options for getting us out of this airport and chosen the least risky one, then this starts to seem like the only sane thing to do. I am not a risk adverse man in most areas of my life, Christine, but when it comes to your safety, please know, I'm not taking any chances. I want you - "

He seemed to fluster, and started over, "What I want is you, in one piece - not a chance to show off my hand-to-hand combat skills."

She looked at him tiredly. "A choice with only one option doesn't count as a choice.."

His shoulders slumped, a little. "There is always the other alternative.. But it's not as simple as you walking up to the nearest policeman and proclaiming you've escaped the madman. This is not really the time and place I had hoped to go into it, but -"

"I'm not going another step until you explain." Christine heard herself saying, before her mind had consciously decided.

"I wouldn't have imagined otherwise. One moment." He walked back up the last few stairs and pulled the door shut behind her. "It's probably best if you sit down."

Warily, she sat at the top of the landing, leaning back against her suitcase and the wall, and he awkwardly crouched beside her.

"Your other choice has always been to, frankly, choose. To tell me with certainty that you love that boy and you could never, ever, love me."

"You said you'd kill yourself," she threw at him.

"I still might. When I anticipate a world without you, it seems like the better alternative. But I don't want that to be a factor, here, because there's enough additional complication already."

"How can you possibly expect - "

"I need you to listen to me, please. Up until very recently, the worst thing in the world I could contemplate was that you would choose him, and I would have to let you go and I would lose the only person who had ever made me happy - although 'happy' seems like a bit of an understatement. You make me feel something shocking, and soul wrenching, some kind of burst that I have burned through half the pharmaceuticals in Manhattan trying to reproduce without avail. You are the only person who has ever made me feel that... or ever made me feel something so simple as hopeful. Or tender. Or any number of other emotions that I have suddenly grown quite attached to."

Even with him crouched beside her, he was still taller than she was. She tried to read his eyes, but he went on.

"...But I have, of course, been keeping tabs on the internal communications among the managers of the Met, the authorities from the FBI and CIA with whom they've been conspiring, and, unfortunately, the De Chagny family."

He took a deep breath. "Christine, your country's government doesn't have the best reputation for clemency toward those who would aid or abet terrorists, and unfortunately by some of their classifications, that's what I am."

"What?" she said. "For what country? What cause? What have you blown up?"

"I would confess without hesitation to criminal destruction of a chandelier that lead to reckless endangerment of the populace, a good deal of manslaughter and fatal self defense that suspiciously resembles second degree murder, and a truly magnificent amount of embezzlement. None of it traditional enemy-of-the-state material, but your Homeland Security department is overzealous, to put it mildly. And certainly the best way to get extra agents and funding for a manhunt is to brand it a threat to national security."

She rubbed her forehead, and gestured at the landing beside her, and he moved from kneeling to sitting and continued. "About a week ago I discovered that your innocence and non-involvement with regards to my actions was not necessarily considered a given. The one bit of fortune in this is that the authority assigned to the case was Agent Kahn -"

"I remember him. He said he knew you." She interjected, hesitantly.

"A very long time ago, we were... friends, I suppose you would say. I saved his life, once. He's a principled man, even if his current employers are much less so. His meddling has been unwelcome, but from what I've observed of his proposals regarding this case, he's advocating sanity as best he can. But your De Chagny, to his irksome credit, has been fairly tireless in striking bargains with the government, with Agent Khan's help. The original deal was that your involvement in the plot to catch me was a plea bargain to guarantee your non-guilt."

"What?" Christine jolted up. "Why didn't he tell me any of this?"

"...And in the event that you didn't carry it off successfully, the backup plan would be to have you declared a victim of manipulation as you were mentally unfit to be aware of your actions."

A moment passed, and she looked up at him with furrowed eyebrows. "...Raoul's going to have me declared insane."

He nodded, his expression somber. "I find it reprehensible, but given the circumstances, he doesn't have many options. The De Chagny family psychiatrist is prepared to make the diagnosis. You would spend some time in an institution, probably undergo some unnecessary treatments at and eventually make a quiet recovery and return to life. It would probably be the end of your singing career. But you wouldn't go to prison."

She pulled her legs in tightly, and rested her forehead on her knees, suddenly cold, the world spinning. Finally she turned her head laid her cheek on her knees. "So because I didn't go through with the plan, I didn't take off your mask... that's what you meant, when you said I'd need the money to keep running."

"I imagined that might be preferable to losing months or years of your life to a mental hospital." he said grimly. "There are some lovely tropical islands without extradition treaties to the US for minor offenders. You'd stand a decent chance blending in, if you were on your own."

She squeezed her eyes shut, the hint of tears but not outright crying. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"I wasn't looking forward to it, but I really was planning on it."

"Why didn't you tell me yet? Or were you just going to allude to it indefinitely?"

He rested an elbow on his knee, and his forehead on the back of his hand, before turning to look at her. "Selfish reasons," he said, with a shake of his head. "I wanted you to choose me, and not just choose that you wanted to avoid incarceration or institutionalization. And guilt, really - I have quite a lot of it, that association with me has brought such unpleasantries into your life."

"But would you have done anything differently, if you had known?"

He limbered down a few steps, to move from sitting beside her to kneeling in front of her, and gestured as though he were going to take both of her hands in his, but stopped just short and curled his own hands into fists. After a long breath, he looked up at her.

"Forgive me. I might have tried a dozen different ways to keep your association with me better hidden from the managers and certainly from the authorities, but -" his voice broke, and he continued hoarsely, "but no. I wouldn't have wished you'd never met me, or anything of the kind. I still think I can keep you safe, I still think I can make you happy, so happy that the risks associated with knowing me would be worth it."

He met her eyes, face inches from her own. "Christine, I love you - perhaps not wisely, but all too well."

The hum of the fluorescent lights seemed to amplify the silence, and Christine finally broke eye contact, and took a shaking breath before she spoke, looking at the floor in front of her. "I'm not choosing. Not now. I'm choosing to have more time. Can you live with that?"

"Now who doesn't have a choice?" he replied - but his tone was warm and self-effacing, for once. "You know I have to be. But 'I don't know' is still better than 'no.'"

He looked at her fondly, almost as though her half answer were still an honor to receive, and then just kept looking, his eyes meeting hers, minutes passing in silence, before he finally shook his head slightly, as if to clear it, and said, patiently, "...When you're ready, we should probably keep moving."

He stood, and gradually she stood as well, and met his gaze. He gestured with his left hand, palm swooping as gracefully through the air as a synchronized swimmer's arm through water, his hypnotic voice silent but his entire body saying, "after you."

She slowly nodded, shrugged the purse onto her shoulder, then looked up at him again, and half smiled, before turning, and leading the way down the rest of the stairs and into the next hallway.

**XXXXXXXX**

It was simple, in the end.

Down the hallway to the door, a swift walk across a nearly-empty and clearly halfway-renovated pavilion which must have once been a customs processing hall. A few quick steps to avoid open gaps in the floor and diversions around dormant heavy machinery, a keycode or two, and then it was down another set of stairs to the ground floor, solid concrete suddenly beneath her feet, ankles aching so, still in Aminita's boots - and a dozen steps to the truck.

It was a little thing, electric, some cross between a Smart Car and a moving van, and she chucked her suitcase in the back and got into the passenger's seat, as Erik handed her a utility worker's helmet and industrial blue jacket, and then donned one of each himself. He steered the silent vehicle out from under the terminal onto a service roadway, and toward a gate in the distance.

"I don't suppose you ever imagined we'd be driving a glorified golf cart together," Erik said lightly.

"Maybe you underestimate my capacity for imagination." She shrugged.

He raised an eyebrow. "Consider me surprised, to say the least. But if _golf_ is the path to your heart, I could get over my loathing of the world's dullest sport. I'm certain they make black argyle."

Chrisine blushed, "I was... kidding, I guess."

"I was too," he said, and then taking his eyes off the road he turned his head back towards her and smiled sadly. "Mostly."

They passed through the gate without the guard even looking up. Half a mile outside the airport in an industrial neighborhood, Erik pulled over into a small lot and parked the service vehicle. Wordlessly, she retrieved her bag from the back and followed him, across the lot to a small beige sedan. Christine silently noted contrast between this and his normal car - and without even looking from loading their luggage into the tiny trunk, Erik said, "Don't think for a moment that the color isn't killing me. But the thing about bland is that it blends in so very well."

Christine suppressed a smile. "I suppose even you could put up with boring for a rental car."

"Oh," he said distractedly as he reached under the seat, retrieved the key and put it in the ignition, "I bought it. Remotely purchasing a Honda Civic that fell off a truck requires far less paperwork than renting a car at the airport, and is far more reliable than hoping for an unattended vehicle in the right place to commandeer."

Fastening her seatbelt and shutting the door, Christine asked, almost fully knowing the answer, "How long do you expect to own it for?"

"About forty-five minutes." He replied, and she swore she could see a half smile from under the mask. He started the car, and drove towards Tokyo.

She kept thinking that surely they were downtown, already, but then they'd move into an area with even more densely packed buildings, even taller skyscrapers, and she had to mentally adjust her impression of how large Tokyo was.

They eventually wound onto a road parallel to an elevated train track, brick arches beneath the tracks, with tiny businesses built into the space below each arch, restaurants and bars, mostly, with a strange mix of businesspeople and scruffier looking types on the street. Erik turned left at an underpass and pulled the car over.

"Thirty six minutes," he said, lightly, getting out of the car and gesturing that she should do the same. "Welcome to Shiodome, where executives come to drink their crushing responsibilities away, and criminals come to help alleviate the burdens of their wallets and laptops as well. I give it seven minutes until this car is stolen, making my previous estimate for duration of automobile ownership spot-on."

"What's the prize?" Christine replied dryly.

"You tell me." he said with a pointed look, and picked up both of their bags, and set hers before her definitively.

His tone was flippant, joking, but the look in his eyes was still, somehow, hopeful.

"Bed," she said. Erik seemed wracked by a coughing fit, and she quickly followed up, "Actual sleep in an actual bed. That's the only prize I want right now."

"Mademoiselle's wish is more or less my command," he said, thumping his chest a few times, and gestured to the eastern end of the tunnel. They walked on across a few streets, past a transit station and eventually into an office complex, several skyscrapers clustered around a plaza, with shops and small takeout lunch restaurants on the first level. With a subtle nod, Erik directed her towards the second tallest of the towers.

"The safest place on this planet is concealed within that building, because it is a place that does not exist on any blueprint or floorplan. The only thing standing between you and a good night's sleep in an infinitely secure room is the world's finest security system. Shall we?"

With a nonchalance that was patently false confidence, he held out his hand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As ever, reviews are welcome!


	7. Chapter 7

Decisions required certainty; certainty required some feeling and knowledge and confidence in one's own beliefs that everyone on earth seemed to have but her. On a regular day she could decide, with some effort, whether she wanted coffee or tea. The idea of being certain enough to deciding to do anything today seemed impossible. Too many hours spent at an altitude of 35,000 feet and nowhere nearly enough of it sleeping, too much everything to even contemplate; her ankles hurt, her back was sore, her head was killing her, and here was Erik, offering up his heart again, and she could feel her heart aching in her chest, already wincing at the thought of having to refuse him once more.

It would be so much easier to just take his hand.

He would be so happy, and she felt a quiver in her shoulders just imagining it, Erik, happy... but there was no way to give him small affections, no halfway, no way to give him anything short of everything. The idea of taking his hand felt like inviting a dam to burst, with no way to contain it again; it seemed like her only options were to hold him at arm's length or collapse into his love entirely.

"…So are we going to be crawling under this security system's laser beams, or just rappelling down from the ceiling?" She finally said, far too tired to feel any surprise. Of course he was taking her to a nonexistent place in a skyscraper in Tokyo. Of course she, too, was technically on the lam now. She was exhausted and frank acceptance seemed the path of least resistance.

"Neither, actually" Erik said, with a frankness that almost sounded as though he'd taken her seriously. "The advantage of being the one who designs these buildings and their security systems is that I design their virtual trapdoors as well. Let me show off a rather clever bit of technology."

He briskly withdrew his hand, as though no invitation to physical contact had just been offered, and made quick work of taking off his long overcoat, turning it inside out to reveal a grey checked lining, and then putting it back on. "You see, my dear, a rather dull checked jacket. Not quite houndstooth, and not particularly interesting - unless you're a computer that's been designed to do intricate analysis of every frame of video that comes in on a building's security cameras."

"Why does a camera care about a jacket?" she asked, trying not to focus on the absurdity of the very question.

"The statistical photometric recognition behavior in the software is what the client requested; it allows the building's security officers to be alerted when the system recognizes the faces of any known suspects of corporate espionage. The ability of that same system to read a particular QR code and neglect to digitally record anything in a two foot radius of it is an outright exploit on the part of their architect's security firm. Which I also own."

He said the final sentence with something approaching pride, and she nodded, trying to keep up.

"So," he continued, gesturing at the jacket, "this sartorial disappointment is actually a precisely woven matrix-form barcode. The camera records it, the computer controlling the camera reads the barcode's content in the first frame, and then the software suffers a buffer overflow, due to this one case deliberately allowing unsanitized database inputs - and operating as root now, outside the normal software, it executes the remainder of the content in the barcode as a command. The command is that the camera should write neutral-state data for the frames where the coat was recorded."

It had been months since she'd seen him in magician mode, and Christine was surprised to find that she could recognize it now as an act he put on - that she could identify when he was doing his best to impress her, instead of just feeling so overwhelmed and impressionable that his mental leaps felt impossible to catch up with. That she was starting to understand anything about this man seemed even more surprising than the fact that she felt like she'd almost been able to follow the intricacies of system he'd been describing.

"So," she began, wrapping her head around it, as he began walking and she followed alongside, "the pattern on the fabric is a code to tell the video cameras not to save any footage of the coat itself... so the security tapes don't show us entering the building?"

He tilted his head and looked at her. "Clever girl," he said, doing little to hide that he was as much surprised as he was impressed. "I think you underestimate your own aptitude for technology; had you not been gifted with such a voice, you could have made your way in quite a few other careers."

Even now, even after everything, she still felt herself warm to his praise. She could feel herself turning toward it like a flower to the sun, like a child to be patted on the head, and she fought the urge to relax for a moment and bask in the admiration radiating off him almost visibly in the morning light. Trying to feel immune to his tone and gestures, the meaning of his words then struck her as ridiculous.

"...if I didn't have my _voice_?" She bristled, incredulous. "Would you still even be interested in me, if I didn't have my voice? You would have never noticed me in the first place."

"' _Interested'_ in you... That is quite the choice of words, Christine." He looked at her intensely, and she couldn't read the expression in the mismatched eyes locked on her own.

"I'm not wrong," she replied, surprised at how confident and indignant she felt in saying it. "I would have just been another ballerina who dreamt of singing and couldn't, and you'd wouldn't have paid me any more attention than you would have paid a ticket-taker or a set-painter or any other anonymous employee at the Met."

"I will say this exactly once," Erik stopped sharply, and turned to look at her. "A man in my position in life would go _mad_ if he dabbled in impossible what-ifs of alternate pasts. I cannot know what would have happened if we'd met under different circumstances and I cannot change the way in which we've already come to be who we are to one another. The past is outside my ability to change and wondering about it is _pointless_." The last words came out so rigidly resolute that she wondered if this was something he'd often told himself.

"But," he continued, seeming to soften somewhat, "I can tell you what is in my power - I can tell you the future. if you lost your voice tomorrow and never sang another note, I would mourn the loss of the world's most beautiful instrument - and I would still want to spend the rest of my days with the woman it once belonged to. Your voice is something you have; it is not the entirety of what you mean to me. Is that settled?" He asked, flatly, almost as though he were exasperated to have to say it expressly.

Christine looked up from her intense study of the immaculate pavement to meet his gaze, feeling somewhat chagrined, and she nodded and murmured, "Thank you."

He was looking at her curiously, and as they resumed walking she felt him start to speak and then withdraw, several times, before he finally just came out with it and asked quietly, "Was that a... hurdle?"

"What do you mean?"

"The mistaken impression which you apparently had up until several seconds ago, that I cared first and foremost about your vocal instrument. Was that something standing... between us, before?"

Yes," she said softly, feeling an immense vulnerability in the word.

He nodded slowly in understanding, not breaking eye contact with her.

"Do you keep a running list of what those things are?" she finally asked, with a gentleness that couldn't help sounding wary.

"Always," he replied with swift formality, his smile stiff and sad.

She exhaled a long breath in response, but after a minute she smiled, a little, trying to lighten the mood. "That's a tremendous amount of pressure for me to be under."

"Let me assure you, the pressure is worse on my end," he replied, with a tone that was genuine, but twinged with a sympathetic humor that almost felt like an endearing joke between the two of them instead of another round of trenchant self-deprecation. The extent of feelings she had felt toward him in the last 48 hours, from fury to mercy to... to whatever this was, was overwhelming, and -

"So for this to work," Erik said, interrupting her thoughts, "Our physical presence needs to be as forgettable as the digital one. There will almost certainly be a few people in the lobby coming and going, and we need to not cross their level of awareness. Walk into the building as though no one belongs there more than you. Imagine you have been here a hundred times, and you are just walking across the lobby and slightly to the right, toward the elevators that you know by heart are right there. We are going to an office. It is exquisitely dull."

Nodding, numbly, so tired she thought she might nod off if she did it another time, Christine confirmed his instructions and walked just slightly ahead of him into a central courtyard surrounded by new skyscrapers with glittering windows. A canopy of enormous glass squares patched together like blocks of a quilt soared overhead, supported by silver metal pillars that must have been ninety feet tall. Escalators criss-crossed between three levels of plazas and she could see office workers, begining to filter into the area for a day's work.

With a few subtle directions, Erik indicated the appropriate building to enter and trying her best to embody the character of someone who was not nervous, suspicious or anxious, she strode in through the revolving door, her heels clicking on the polished tiles, the whirr of her suitcase wheels echoing in her wake, Erik's footsteps snapping not much further behind. As they waited for the elevator to arrive, she fought the urge to look up at the corners of the room where the cameras probably were; employees in this building probably never thought about the digital eyes in the ceiling, watching - and they definitely didn't look at them.

The elevator arrived and she felt a bit of relief, stepping in, to not be out in the open; even if the security cameras could be made to forget that they'd seen a missing woman and a man in a mask, bystanders who worked in the office building might still remember - and a low, uneasy part of her was still afraid of what Erik might do to ensure their silence.

As the elevator began to ascend, he interrupted her thoughts. "Not much longer now. You're doing quite well, and there's rest ahead."

The front and back walls of the elevator were sleek stainless steel with black glass panels at the sides; were there cameras behind them? Unsure if she was able to actually talk, she finally let her eyes dart from side to side and raised her eyebrows at him, asking a silent question as her eyes met his own.

"Good of you to check, but you can speak freely. None of the monitoring anywhere records audio, just visual - and there aren't any cameras in the elevators or on the floor we'll be going to. Like I said, I designed it from top to bottom."

"That's good, I guess," she said, feeling her shoulders relax. "But... even if we're not on the security tapes, If I were looking for a guy who'd kidnapped a soprano... Erik, the first place I'd look is a building he designed."

"I'm still holding out for 'absconded with,' instead of kidnapped," he said lightly, as he turned away from her, slid open a panel above the elevator buttons and began to fiddle with a keypad there.

"As to the issue you pose, I have designed twelve different skyscrapers across four different continents under seven different architecture firm names," he continued, as though it were very boring, "so even if someone could pull together the appropriate clues to suspect which buildings I had a hand in, it would still take weeks to organize search warrants. And even if the swat team were to sweep the building from roof to basement, looking under every desk and in every maintenance area, they wouldn't find the place where we will be securely residing, because the blueprints show the space to be occupied by the building's air conditioning and ventilation system, the sub-risers for the water pressurization, as well as parts of the infrastructure for the elevators. I just designed each of those elements to be imperceptibly smaller and more efficient, and created space out of thin air. Think of it as the architectural equivalent of stealing the rounding errors on every banking transaction."

"Ok." She finally said, watching the lights above the door show their rise to the 32nd, 33rd, 34th floor. The lights stopped at 35, but the beep indicating they were rising continued three floors further, and she thought, idly, back to the last time she was counting the ascension of an elevator. The doors opened to reveal a dimly lit concrete and dull steel hallway completely unlike the design-concious modern lobby.

"Mechanical level," Erik said, by way of explanation, and led the way out.

Pipes lined the walls and tight bundles of wires ran taught across the ceiling, and each room they entered was filled with large, industrial air conditioners of some kind. Christine supposed she must have known that these things existed somewhere in every building she'd been in, but it had never occurred to her that there were entire floors full of them.

Erik stopped in front of a bank of these air conditioning units, almost like a wall of beige closets full of fans, and began entering what seemed like the thousandth code on the thousandth panel of numbers she'd seen. He flipped a half dozen switches then opened another panel, concealed in the interior wall of the air conditioning unit, and pressed his thumb against the square inch of glass inside. The heavy thunk that followed was quickly lost amidst the noise of the hundreds of fans around them, but the effect was obvious when the entire unit hinged open, like a two foot thick bank vault door, constructed entirely of industrial machinery.

He gestured that she should walk ahead of him and she stepped inside, the concrete passageway within just barely wide enough for the suitcase, and she pulled it behind her with some effort as it scraped the walls, and as he went through some intricate series of steps to close the door behind them. They walked for possibly eight more feet, then turned left, then the flooring abruptly changed from concrete to hardwood and the hallway widened significantly to reveal a small room that almost looked like a foyer.

"Welcome home, for the next thirty-six hours," Erik said, as he squeezed past her and opened the door in front of them.

The contrast between the mechanical level and this room was surreal; it was like stepping out of a factory and into some futuristic vision of a hotel room, rendered at half scale. The room was no more than 12 feet square, and ceiling and walls were all immaculate white, with every corner rounded. One corner held a bed with a meringue-like white duvet, and the other had an lounge chair of streamlined rounded wood with leather cushions and a small ottoman, surrounded by a set of floor to ceiling shelves containing books, a laptop computer, and a large set of headphones.

It was absurd.

All of this was absurd, and she was so tired that surely she was delirious, and Christine let out a laugh, high and strange, without really meaning to.

"The bed is yours, and yours alone, as promised," Erik said sharply, looking away from her.

"That's not it," she said, finally, getting control of her laugher. "I'm really, really tired, and you have a secret room in some industrial blind spot in a skyscraper in Tokyo, and you put an _Eames chair_ in it."

"Ah," he said, and she could sense him trying to lower his defensive walls coming down as abruptly as they'd risen. "Well. This space was built for waiting out extreme circumstances, such as I hadn't even imagined when constructing it - but I did imagine that if I ever needed to make use of it, I would appreciate certain... standards being up to par," he said, relaxing somewhat. "Now, if you'll make yourself comfortable, I need a few minutes to address my increasingly annoying battle wound." She nodded, and he disappeared through a door along the back wall whose seams had barely been visible in the sleek white panels a moment before.

Busying herself with taking off her shoes and opening her suitcase to rummage for the toiletries case, she tried not to worry about the any of the fears and anxieties that were currently circling her like wolves. Erik had a gunshot wound. Raoul had made a bargain with the government to try and imprison Erik that might land her in jail or an institution as a result. She was teetering on the delirium point of sleep deprivation on a new continent, traveling with a man who loved her well beyond any rational measure, for reasons she was still trying to convince herself she deserved. And the man who loved her was impossibly difficult and confusingly wonderful by turns, and he was ugly, and his life had been traumatic, and he needed years - he needed decades, probably - of therapy.

Christine put both her hands over her face and drew a long breath in and focused on not letting her ribs shake, on not giving in. She couldn't deal with the wolves right now.

Food. Surely he had thought of food.

She walked toward the wall near the bookshelves and saw a faintly perceptible line in the wall to the left. She pressed on it, and a cabinet door swung open to reveal a streamlined, polished bar, bottles of fancy liquors lined up and lustrous, gleaming like an art deco cruise liner. She closed it, and tried pressing on the next surface to the left. This opened as well, and revealed a set of shelves of jars, cans, and vacuum-sealed foodstuffs. She turned a few of the cans around and decided that Confit de Canard was definitely not on the menu for breakfast, and finally found a few packages of dried fruit, and opened one, ravenously. The cabinet below revealed dozens of liter bottles of water; she took one and was placing it on the bedside table when the door opened and Erik emerged from the restroom.

He was wearing the same black lightweight wool trousers from his suit, but the white dress shirt and blazer had been replaced by a charcoal grey long-sleeved knit shirt that bulged obviously over the bandage on his arm. Her eyes went straight to it and she tried to avert them, tried not to stare, and wonder, and worry, before she finally just asked him, "Are you ok?"

"Given the multitude of circumstances," he replied wryly, "I suppose a 'yes' is in order, overall. I keep a rather decent first aid kit in each of my safe houses, so I had most of the supplies that I needed, and all I really need now to recover is a good day or two of rest and elevation to allow the hemostasis to really take hold."

"I'm glad," she said, relieved. "Is there anything else you need?"

"Well, if I'm going to keep traveling with you, I should probably add QuickClot to my everyday carry," he said, his tone implying it was a joke.

"Ok," she said, exhausted and growing tired of him talking over her head. "If you don't mind..."

"Please," he said, stepping aside fully and gesturing at the door to the restroom. "If you'd like a shower, the towels are in the cabinet above the sink." He walked across the room to where his suitcase was, and seemed to busy himself in putting things away.

"...When you were building an invisible room to 'wait out extreme circumstances,' you took the time to put in a shower." Her voice was half question, half statement.

"Of course," he said, without looking up from his suitcase. "I'm a sociopath, dear, not a Philistine."

**XXXXXXXX**

Twenty minutes of staring up into the rainfall showerhead mounted into the ceiling of a tiny glass cabinet in the equally tiny bathroom. Twenty minutes of hot water straight to her face and hair, and she was still in this surreal space outside her life. It seemed impossible that she was here, like that at any moment now she would wake up and find herself at home in her walk-up apartment in Brooklyn, piecing together the bits of a dream and realizing like always, in the aftermath, that the oddness had come from the fact that her imagination was limited. But this place was beyond her imagination and unlike most dreams, the architect of the very strange environs she now inhabited was exactly outside the restroom door. Christine took a deep breath, and stepped out, wearing the old-fashioned cotton poplin pajamas she'd found folded crisply at the bottom of her suitcase.

The back of Erik's head was just visible over the top of the elaborate armchair, and his hair was still so sleek and unmussed after hours of traveling that Christine found herself wondering for the first time if his hair was a wig, and felt immediately uncomfortable at the thought. He did not look up, seemingly engrossed in the slim computer now open in his lap.

She rubbed the towel across her hair with flat palms, feeling almost a little relieved that he hadn't had the infinite foresight to provision a blow dryer as well, and leaned against the doorframe, watching his fingers fly across the keyboard of a laptop instead of a piano, for once.

"What are you working on?" She asked, idly.

"One moment," he said, emphatically typing a few more lines. "And.. voila, success. Well! That's terribly satisfying."

"What is?" She asked, with a gentle smile. She was so exhausted that for a lovely moment, the entire scene struck her as domestic and charming.

He spun the chair around and looked over his shoulder at her with undisguised pride. "It looks to all the world like Ms. Christine Daae's credit card was just swiped at a hotel in Adelaide. Your CIA, FBI, and whatever agents of the Commonwealth they wish to enlist will have an excellent clue to follow up on the Australian continent now."

Erik's eyes gleamed with pride and affection, his desire for her praise and approval suddenly as obvious to her as her own need had been before, but she didn't have time to think about that because -

"How did you get my credit card number?"

He whirled around in the chair to face her fully, now, and stood up, setting his chin disdainfully. "I thought you would be appreciative of the news, but if you're not, perhaps it's time we get some rest."

It seemed like every time he spoke, his voice was the swell of a massive wave and it took every bit of alertness she had not to be swept away entirely in the direction he wanted her to go. Erik wanted her to drop the subject, and she resisted, leaned forward against the doorframe. "Did you go into my account?"

His eyes narrowed, and his defense came swiftly. "You used your father's first name as your password, Christine. A password I could guess on the second try is not so much security, as it is an exercise in fundamental fact recollection."

"What was your first guess?" she asked in a low voice, more interested in accusing him of his crime than in actually finding out what the answer was.

His eyes locked onto hers and the moment had suddenly escalated to brinksmanship. "...'Angel,'" he said, his gaze suddenly steely and mirthless.

"I had that account before I ever _met_ you." Christine replied with sudden defensiveness, before her exhausted brain realized that by rights, she owned no explanation of her passwords to anyone. "Erik, every time I think I can trust you, it turns out you're just looking out for yourself and thinking of me as a token in a board game. Did you think about how I might feel when I found out you'd cracked my password? Did you go into my email too?"

Erik crossed his arms. "I'll ignore for the moment the wildly irresponsible implication that you've used the same password everywhere, and address the question at hand. No, I have never attempted to read your email. I have always been terrified of what I might find you had written to your - I'm sorry, would you say 'fiance,' or just 'boyfriend,' Christine? I dislike being imprecise with my words. What exactly would you call that young idiot you'd rather be with right now?"

She stared at him, numb, shocked, and furious.

"By all means," he said, glaring at her, "please, just stand there looking horrified."

"Stop!" she finally choked out. "Why are you doing this? We had a really nice morning."

"I might ask why you had done _any_ of this!" he hissed in return. "I told you I _loved_ you, and you certainly didn't tell me to take my sad case elsewhere; you just nodded, and demurred, and said anything but 'no' in a thousand half-hearted ways. You said you couldn't bear to lose me because you loved our lessons and I clung to it like a lovesick idiot _._ "

His eyes were almost glowing now, with pain, and she couldn't even form words over the lump of misery in her throat before he went on.

"I tried to give you everything! I told you of hopes so pathetically earnest that I _burn_ in shame to think of them now. And all the time, you just said didn't know what you felt, and you couldn't live without your _Angel..._ but you certainly needed more time to spend with your dear friend from your summer seaside days. Christine, does that boy know your _soul_?"

"I don't know that I know it myself!" she cried, tears pushing trails down her face. Her chest was shaking with sobs, and she hoped that her tears would melt his anger, give them some time to discuss this - but Erik just took a long breath in, then picked up the chair with his good arm and strode toward the door. He deposited it in the hallway outside, maneuvering the door with some difficulty, then returned for the ottoman and wordlessly flipped the lightswitch on his way out, plunging the tiny room into complete darkness and slamming the door behind him.

Numbly, Christine felt her way toward the bed, slipped under the covers, and let her body finally give in to outright sobbing. She was completely overwhelmed; her entire chest rang with a despairing ache, and she found herself missing the days when she'd been naive and desperate enough to believe in _angels_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's Note: You are wonderful, gorgeous, insightful readers for writing the kind of feedback you have so far, and so much of it has helped me make decisions about how things will play out between our dear heroes. Thank you for your reviews and PMs, they were a wonderful motivation to write this chapter much more quickly than the last one!
> 
> ~Ver


	8. Chapter 8

_Manhattan_

_Nearly a year earlier..._

...The voice had been gone for six days.

She was beyond beginning to worry if she'd imagined it in the first place, and was roughly at the point of wondering if Steinhardt's student health insurance covered anti-schizophrenia meds. Her new role at the opera house was too uncertain and improbable to even think of asking for help there, but she needed help, clearly - because the truth of the matter was that she no longer heard a voice in her head, and she _missed_ it. Every rational circuit in her brain urged her to be grateful for her apparent return to sanity, but she was hollow and desperate with grief, aching at the loss of the one thing that had ever made her feel whole, and normal… That alone would be enough to turn her head entirely, but beyond the feeling of being safe, and cared for, and content... those few moments when the voice had joined her in song, she had felt _glorious_.

Was this how addicts felt in withdrawal?

Christine sat on an old fashioned piano stool in one of the university's solo rehearsal rooms - little more than a small soundproof closet, really - waiting, her head in her hands, alternating between frantic hope and counting off perfectly logical realistic reasons for her apparent break with reality. Religious upbringing. Anniversary of her father's death. Stress of starting grad school. Stress of Mayor Bloomberg cutting funding for the program that provided her scholarship. Trying to make ends meet by chasing an impossible dream to be in the chorus at the Met while still in school. Sleep deprivation. Malnutrition.

Yet somehow she kept coming back to the only possible conclusion: she was losing it, in a frightening and pathetic way, desperately dreaming of some guardian angel to save her from mediocrity and loneliness. Her watch showed just past 11pm; rehearsals had finished nearly four hours ago, and she had been waiting here ever since. If she left now, she could get the last M train, before the subway shifted to the night-owl schedule. Christine stared at the egg-crate foam lining the walls of the room, noting how rehearsal spaces and insane asylums seemed to have similar design aesthetics, and finally stood up, because if she was going to cry in an empty room, she'd rather do it at home. She grabbed her satchel and swung it over her shoulder, turning to leave.

"You will have your wish," the voice said, without greeting. The noise reverberated in her ears, bell-like, filling them with a sound so beautiful that any skeptical thoughts she had ever entertained retreated entirely.

"Wait!" She said, heart suddenly pounding in her chest and bursting with joy all at once, twirling on her heel away from the door, her eyes darting about the tiny room, looking for some sign of where the voice was coming from. The room fell silent again and she went on, quickly, "I'm sorry - I'm sorry I asked to see you. It was just so hard to believe... but please - please! Hearing you is better than nothing. You were gone for so long, and I missed you so much…"

The stronger moments of wanting to know what on Earth was going on dissolved completely, sublimated into an unslakable _need_ that she couldn't put logic to.

"It was too long," the voice admitted, "but I will apologize in person."

"Oh..." her voice trailed off, and she was suddenly wrought with nervousness. "I thought... I thought I'd ruined… everything. You said it would all be over, if I ever saw you... And then you were gone, and I thought you'd never come again, and I was so sorry..." The silence stretched out, without any further response from the voice, and she suddenly felt awkward and eager. "So you're going to visit me?"

"Actually," the voice replied in a tone that seemed both trepidatious and amused, "It is you, who will be visiting me."

...And although Christine Daae knew that an excellent way to wind up floating in the East River was to go somewhere on the advice of the voices in one's head, she found herself following the instructions, feeling a profound sense of peace as she walked toward the maintenance area at the rear of the building, feeling that everything was natural, and inevitable, and right, at last, as the elevator began descending without her even touching the buttons. It was almost like floating, each step perfectly following the last as smooth as skating on ice, and when the elevator doors opened on the lowest level, the grey Town Car was idling there as the voice had promised.

The doors unlocked with a smooth noise as she approached and got in the backseat; the uniformed driver was silent, and Christine looked at him for a second, wondering if there was something to say, something she'd forgotten. She absent-mindedly put on her seat belt, and as the buckle clicked, the chauffeur moved the car into drive and they slid down Houston to Lafayette to Park Avenue, northbound.

It was too late for traffic, and so the car moved uptown with ease, the driver's movements so smooth and methodical that Christine was reminded of a spacecraft gliding on autopilot back to the mothership. The windows were heavily tinted, such that she could barely make out street signs, but she could tell when they turned right, abruptly, to swing around Grand Central Station. Somewhere past 50th street the car turned left, and then eventually right again; she caught sight of Columbus Circle and then the turns came too quickly for her to keep track of, before the car turned sharply left and down a ramp into an underground parking garage.

The driver pulled down the visor to enter a long series of numbers on an electronic device mounted there. A glass square at the end of the device glowed red, and he placed his right thumb on it; the light scanned across his thumb and then changed to green, and the metal mesh entry gate lifted. As though fingerprint scanning were a perfectly normal way to enter a parking garage, the driver put the visor back up and aimed the car toward the ramp to the lower levels.

A wary instinct began to grow in Christine's chest, pulling her out of the cocoon-like sense of safety she had felt earlier, as she was nearly floating out of the rehearsal room.

"I'm sorry," She said, as though she were interrupting a stranger on the street. "Excuse me - where are we going? I - I think I want to get out."

The uniformed driver was silent, and continued piloting the car down the spiraling series of ramps - were they four levels underground now? Five? None of the levels had any cars on them, and she realized that even if the car hadn't been soundproofed, there was no one around to hear her, if she decided to shout.

"I'm sorry - I think I changed my mind. Can you just take me back?" she said, urgency growing in her voice, the silly dreams of an angel gone, and the reality of being in a strange car underground coming to her like waking up on the edge of a cliff.

The car halted in front of a large metal grate, and Christine immediately undid her seat belt and tried the door, yanking on the handle when it refused to move. She saw the driver repeat the process of entering a code on the visor, and the grate slowly began to lift, revealing a shadowy additional area of parking. Driving faster now, the car flew across it, around a corner, into a tunnel, around a corner again, and it seemed like they'd driven further than a block underground now.

She thought of leaping over the seat and - what, grabbing the wheel? Attacking the chauffeur? At the speed they were going, it would certainly cause an accident, and what if he was armed, and... how big could this parking garage be? She wasn't even sure what direction they were headed, she'd lost track of the bends of the tunnel and in the ramp down in the first place and -

The car eased to a stop in front of a silver door with no doorknob, set into one of the shadowy concrete walls. Christine squinted, wondering if she was meant to get out, or to wait for someone to come out of the door, and she was trying to decide if there was anything in her bag she could use as a weapon, when the electronic beeping began. It grew louder, more insistent, and she realized it was a phone - nearby - louder, louder - and in the leather pocket of the seat ahead of her, she found a silver mobile embossed with "V"s; its chevron-shaped screen indicating a private number as the incoming call.

The phone pulsed again in her hand, and mid-ring she hit the button on the left and somewhat dazedly asked, "Hello?"

"Christine," the voice said in a tone that was distinctly pleased. "Thank you for being patient with me."

Her urge to run was somehow gone; the voice was warm and imparted upon her the same buzzing sense of protection and specialness that it had every time she had ever heard it before. And she wanted so badly to know why, to know what the voice was, and what was happening.

"I can't tell if this is a test," she finally said, with a kind of despair that sounded hollow and needy to her own ear. "I just wanted to see you, to understand the voice, but now I'm in a strange car and I'm underground somewhere, and… Angel, I'm so scared..."

"I'm not trying to test anything, Christine, least of all your faith in me. I will explain everything..." and here the voice paused. "...You will know everything soon."

"Please," Christine replied, closing her eyes and sighing, half fatigue and half entranced, leaning her forehead against the front seat of the towncar, so rapt in speaking with the voice, again, at last, that she didn't care what the driver thought of her.

"Look in the pocket where you found the phone. There should be a box with a key inside. The key to just about everything, as it were," and here the voice let out a laugh, though it wasn't particularly funny. But she did find a slim orange box in the seat pocket, and she slid the lid off to find a patterned scarf - but no key. She took the bit of silk by the corner and shook it, and a shiny rectangle of black plastic tumbled out, unmarked, like a blank credit card. Oh, she thought. That kind of key.

Following the voice's instructions she got out of the car - the door conveniently unlocked now - and walked to the metal door in the concrete wall. The card slid neatly into the electronic-looking panel to the left of the door; a green LED illuminated, and the card was spat back out at her as the metal door rescinded into the wall, revealing a small, obsidian-floored lobby and an open elevator. Christine shrugged her bag up further on her shoulder, and stepped in, wondering which floor she was to push. But there were no buttons in the elevator; just another silver slot, a black line on an otherwise sleek pane of metal. Since the voice had said it was the key to everything, she slid the dark card into the reader, and the elevator began to climb.

She had never before realized how integral the sounds of an elevator were to her comfort in them, and in the absence of the bell chime at each floor, began counting to herself. "One Mississippi, two mississippi..."

At thirty-two Mississippi, it slowed and by thirty-four, it halted. The elevator doors slid open, exposing a long foyer with a round table and a massive vase of calla lilies at its center and an imposing lacquered door at the end. Walking towards it she found yet another card reader, this one a silver box with a vertical slot, and she pushed the card in like a letter into a mailbox. A heavy thunk sounded, but the door didn't move. Christine looked over her shoulder, and then up, hoping for some kind of intervention, but it didn't come, and finally the obvious occurred to her. She lifted her hand, and pressed it to the door, and it swung open, heavy and thick.

She had walked into a space so dazzling, the only thing she could recall that was similar was the planetarium - but as her eyes focused, she realized, the walls on all sides were glass, and outside was a cityscape dotted with stars.

It was nice - it was sparsely lit, but she could easily make out that she was standing in a sleek, modern apartment, dark tones and clean lines, straight out of some magazine about minimalist architecture - and it was just a human residence. Christine knew it was insane to be disappointed, and she was anyway. She had been hoping for an _angel_. What was she doing here?

She walked a little further in, acutely aware of the sound of her own footsteps, wondering if she should take her shoes off, when she looked left and saw him.

A man.

Or the dark outline of one. He was standing back, just out of the light, silhouetted by the night sky and the dazzling city view outside the wall of windows. She froze, and he was already so still that she wondered if the figure was actually a statue.

"Don't be afraid - please, don't be afraid." And the voice came from a mortal source at last. The tall, thin man walking stiffly towards her - was it his words she'd clung to, his music she'd soared upon?

Christine dropped her bag.

"I know - I know this must have all been very confusing. But I promise you, you are safer now than you've ever been... and I am so thankful to have you here... " He walked towards her slowly, his palms in front of him in a gesture that suggested he was calming a frightened animal. But the hands he held in front of him shook, almost as though she were the dangerous one, and then, with one more step, he moved into the light.

Any other detail she might have noticed in that moment was eclipsed by the glare of the halogens hitting the white mask that covered half his face.

She instinctively took a step backward, and he froze. Her pulse was suddenly coming very quickly and all logical parts of her brain were urging her to run but her heart - her heart recognized the voice, and craved it like a last gasp of oxygen. She retreated no further; and seeing this, the man seemed to calm, to try and take a deep breath, and then speak, but no words came. He seemed to try again, this time gesturing a bit - hands in thin black leather gloves seeming to express his frustration - and then his body seemed to relax, as if he were laying down his previous attempts, and he said with quiet wonder, "I cannot believe that you're here. It's you, and you're here."

A shaky pause, as his words sunk in... and Christine whispered, her voice horrified and dry, "What?"

"I... I don't even know how to begin... and I've spent an embarrassing amount of time thinking about what I would say to you..." The man gestured widely at the room, and she registered for the first time the dozens, hundreds, dizzying amounts of flowers in vases covering shelves, tables, windowsils, seemingly every horizontal surface of the room. "It's for you, all of it, Christine."

And her whole chest felt as though it were collapsing, wretchedly, unsteady ground beneath her and a high pitched ringing in her ears, as the reality of the situation seemed to fall devastatingly into place, still baffling, nothing easily identified - but while Christine did not know what was actually going on, she knew very well what was not.

"Who are you?" She heard herself say, low and accusing, wounded.

"I am... sorry," the man said, as though he were, himself, regret embodied.

"The voice..." she swallowed the lump in her throat, dizzy now, "the voice told me it was the Angel of Music."

"I must ask you to forgive me," he said steadily, the melodicism of his words suddenly so seductive that it was all she could do to not sink into it entirely. "I cannot tell you how many times I wished I had never said it. But it seemed to make you so happy, and I couldn't take it back... and I found myself so quickly unable to do _anything_ that might risk losing you..."

So strange, to hear her own fear of loss echoed back at her.

He lowered his head, and then, his whole body, falling to one knee, his head bowed in reverence. "You are the voice, and I am the poor man who worships it. I am Erik." he finally said in blindingly beautiful tones, looking up at her with undisguised adoration. His eyes were mismatched colors.

Christine swayed and took another half step back, unable to process the scene of the man kneeling abjectly before her. "I'm not that good," she said, closing her eyes, trying to steady herself, "I don't know why you would bother - why you would lie like that, but I can't sing that well, and I… I think I should go."

"Because," and here he paused with great significance, as though he were steeling himself, "I love you."

Her eyes flew open.

He was swaying forward, as though he'd been punched in the stomach by his own words, coming out all in a rush now. "I have fallen in love with you. I love everything about you, beyond all logic. You consume me."

"I..." she said weakly, feeling bewildered by who had the upper hand here, " _I_ consume... _you?_ "

His eyes went wide, and his gaze became as intent as a detective who had just found a clue, as he said, softly and resolutely, " _Christine_... Do you mean to say... Do you feel...?"

And Christine realized with a sinking feeling below her ribs that what she was seeing spelled out across this stranger's face was hope.

He put one hand over his heart, as though it were a shock just to feel it beat.

"I don't know what's real." she said hopelessly, "I don't know you. I - I need - I don't know where I am."

But he didn't seem to hear the growing fear in her voice, and just leaned forward with his heart in his eyes, tentative and logical and so heartfelt it made her wilt to witness it, as he continued, "You said... oh, if you feel one hundredth for me what I feel for you, I may die of happiness in this very moment." His shoulders rose, and he drew a shaky breath, "Do I... consume you the way you consume me? Am I that lucky?"

The moment was heavy with consequences, and paths away from a situation she didn't even understand were looming in front of her with irrevocability. For a strange second - desperate and reckless and _lonely_ \- Christine just wanted to breathe, "Yes," and collapse into the obvious yearning before her, wanted to feel what it was like to at least make someone else happy, because it had been so long since she had been happy herself. Hearing the voice had made her question her sanity, but the notes and the timbre itself been the first light in her life in _years_... but now it appeared the voice was a… a man, who wore a mask, who had lied to her.

"I don't know who you are," she finally whispered, truthfully. "I lived for the voice that I heard in my dressing room. I would have done anything for it - the music was everything, I felt more than I had ever had... But it was a voice that almost seemed to come from inside my head, and there was music, and an angel... I thought I was going insane, and I almost didn't care..." She stopped herself, abruptly. "I can't deal with this."

"Forgive me." the man said sadly, sinking back on his heels and increasing the distance between them once again. "I beg you. The circumstances are lamentable, but the feelings that drove them are so real I may die of them. I am at your mercy."

A silence stretched out, as Christine tried to grapple with what this could possibly mean, but her thoughts were mired in the anguish and shame at having given in so easily to what she should have known was duplicity. She wanted to run, to forget she'd ever needed or adored or _whatever_ it was she felt for the voice, and return to the safety of the prior world where no one paid any notice to her and she had been all alone - but at least she had been no one's fool.

The onslaught misery was swift, and it was with despair that she finally said, "You must have thought so little of me, to tell such lies. You must think I am so worthless -"

"Christine!" he exclaimed, horrified, interrupting her. "I think you are _wonderful_ …"

His cry rang out in the silence that followed, and the frantic look upon the unmasked half of his face suggested the dismay of a man whose situation had rapidly gone a different direction than he had intended.

"Everything I have done," he began steadily, "I have done out of love. I will beg your forgiveness for claiming to be divine - but you must know that I only said it to stay close to you. I've never… gone about anything like this before, and I wanted to give you the only thing I had that might _ever_ make you love me… and I could think of no other way to give you my music… please don't hate me for my deceit."

It was all too much, the words of love from the voice so beloved, but the lie, the man - and what did the mask conceal? What kind of apartment was entered from a heavily secured basement? She didn't have the codes to lift any of the gates and she was trapped here.

"Sir…" she began, the shakiness of her voice echoing in her ears.

"My name is Erik, please - say it," came the impassioned reply.

"Erik," she began, but at this he closed his eyes briefly, in a rhapsodic gesture that seemed out of place, as though he were having a different conversation than the one she was trying, anxiously, to participate in. "Erik, I don't know where I am…"

"You are in my home. 15 Central Park West, not terribly far from the Met. It's a nice building; no one could possibly find fault with it. Let me show you - you would be so happy here."

She felt her eyes widen at the permanence of his suggestion, and stepped backward again, wincing in pain as her leg collided with a coffee table. The sound of glass breaking startled her and she turned to see one of the vases of flowers had fallen to the floor and shattered.

"Leave it," he commanded briskly - and then, with more warmth, "What must I say, Christine, to make you forgive me?"

The smell of the flowers was overpowering, thick and sweet, like standing in a greenhouse, and she thought, for a moment, of the desperation behind buying so many bouquets, of somehow imagining that one rose or even one dozen wasn't enough, but perhaps if he emptied an entire florist's shop of its contents... that perhaps the hundred and first bouquet would make a difference in how she felt... the sad earnestness of such an act made her chest wrench.

"I don't know you," she finally said, as gently as she could, still bewildered and overwhelmed. "I knew the voice, but now... I need to go home. I could only hate you if you kept me here against my will."

A silence hung between them, as her words seemed to reach him at last, and then he nodded.

"What you must think of me," he said, with a sudden propriety that seemed almost formal and removed, and she felt the desperate urgency of his emotions rapidly withdraw as he stood, pulling gently at his cufflinks to straighten them. "Of course. Let me show you the way. My driver, César, will take you to any address you'd like." He turned and walked a few steps ahead, and it was with his back to her that she heard the first few notes.

This man was still the voice, and he was singing...

The music was like water, like waves washing over her, like sinking into a warm bath and being surrounded... reality suddenly seeming as distant and blurred as sounds heard from under the surface of a swimming pool. The music surged and rushed through her head with an intoxicating thrumming, and she felt her thoughts stretching out, suddenly viscous, her consciousness itself seeming to pour slowly, honeyed and sleepy.

He was facing her now, walking toward her with open arms, singing more gloriously than he ever had in their lessons... and it was as though she had been anxious and in pain her entire life without knowing it, and his voice, at last, was the drug that could abate the pain of reality, of living. It was entrancing... Her heart swelled at the beauty, at the golden quality of each note, and she felt whole and normal and... happy... Her last conscious thought was that her legs were feeling tired and perhaps she would just rest on the divan and listen a little longer.

**XXXXXXXX**

Grey light, wan and weak, was starting to come into the room.

Even under a layer of blankets, she was cold, so cold - and as her mind slowly began to take in details, eyes flickering open, Christine realized with horror that she was not at home in her own bed. Shoulders shaking, she threw back the covers, relieved to find the bed otherwise empty and herself fully dressed in her jeans and sweater, save her shoes which were lined up neatly by the foot of the bed. The frantic feeling began to subside, her heart rate slowly sank back to normal, and cold again, she pulled the down comforter back up around her, wrapping herself in it like armor against the reality of the situation she'd woken up into.

The crack of light filtering in through the draperies was barely enough light to see by, and she fumbled at the wall by one side of the bed and then the other, before finally finding what felt like a light switch - it appeared to do nothing at first, then she heard a whirring noise, and the floor to ceiling wall of draperies began to pull back automatically, across the length of the room and around the corner, to reveal two walls of large windows and the faint outline of a pre-dawn Manhattan outside.

She was probably still in his home... _his_ , and at this a shiver ran through her. What sort of man hid behind a mask and spun worlds of lies for wretches like her?

Trying to ground herself, to figure out what to do, she examined her surroundings... the bedroom she was in was easily larger than her entire apartment, and near the windows there was a small sitting area with a coffee table. And on it, folded neatly, was the silk scarf that the key card had been wrapped in last night, and she wondered uncomfortably if this was a... gift. The view of the park before her spoke of ridiculous wealth; was this all some sick game by a bored billionaire? Seduce an orphan and melt her mind with tricks?

The urge to run was growing her chest and she slipped on her shoes and went for the door, pausing before opening it, as though he might be just outside - but the hallway was empty. The doors branching off of it were all closed, and she decided the one at the end was likely the exit, but upon tentatively walking through it she found what looked to be a bedroom, with even higher ceilings than the one she'd come from. There was a dresser, and what looked to be an entire wing of closets paneled in dark wood, contrasting with the textured slate-colored walls - but oddly, no bed... Yet there was a wooden box in the middle of the room, maybe seven feet square and two feet tall, in some polished espresso color to match the closets... On the side, an embossed metal logo read, "Quantum Sleeper Unit."

It looked like a king-sized coffin. Was he... sleeping, in there?

Seduction suddenly seemed like the least of her worries, and in frantic fear she tiptoed out of the room, back down the hallway, desperately hoping that the other end would be an exit, away from the serial killer or whoever it was whose house she was in. Anxiety flooded her body, and even if her rapid footsteps made no noise on the thick carpet, she wondered if _he_ could hear her heartbeat screaming panic with every beat. At the end of the hallway she opened the door as quietly as she could, looking back over her shoulder at the master bedroom - only to enter the room and find the man she thought she'd been fleeing was sitting there before her, engrossed in playing the piano in a living room lined with dark lacquered bookshelves.

Could there truly be music on earth so beautiful that she no longer cared what happened to her?

The thought crept seductively into her head, and floated there, for a moment, threatening to eclipse all logic as it had the night before, but the terror and confusion coursing through her body kept her from sinking back into the music. He took no notice of her, seemingly absorbed in the notes he was playing, and re-playing, as though he were trying to get something just right, focusing on a few bars of the harmony. The piano was enormous - a full concert size - and she noticed it actually had an extra octave at the bass end, the additional keys painted matte black.

The dozens of bouquets of flowers were gone, but she could tell it was the same room she'd been in the night before, which meant the door was... there, across the room from the piano. There was no way to get to it without him seeing. To her right was a row of french doors that must lead to some sort of balcony - but this many stories up, the chances of someone hearing her if she screamed was slim. She was completely trapped.

A desperate thought rose, that even if she couldn't get away from all of this strangeness, she could at least see who she was here with, and it almost felt like she was watching herself advance softly across the room, the thundering notes of the piano drowning out her footsteps as she approached the figure in black, reaching over his shoulder for the mask.

The cry of anguish shattered her eardrums, and then there was chaos and horror as the man who was not an angel turned to reveal a face of atrocity, lunging for her and crying out condemnation and fury as he grabbed her offending hands, and she sobbed and struggled and his hands dug into her wrists, trying to force her to claw at his face with them. The reviling words replaced the music, a symphony of malevolence and pain filling her ears and even as she shut her eyes to at least be free of the sight of the horrific face screaming at her, she heard him insist that she feast her eyes upon the monster she had revealed. She opened them again and saw eyes full of pain staring at her, and he faltered, for just a second - long enough that, twisting, she was able to wrench herself free. Still gripping the mask she ran at full speed for the glass-paneled French doors, throwing them open and stumbling out onto an enormous terrace under a row of arches three stories high, surrounded by a black wire railing at waist height, Central Park and the skyscrapers beyond looming just over the edge.

Christine ran.

Later, she would think that maybe it was just the latter half of the instinct for fight or flight; maybe it was the twisted logic that it would be better to hurl herself off the 34th floor than be strangled by a man who seemed filled with murderous rage, but in the moment she was just running straight for the edge, as quickly as she could, imagining the moment of relief she would feel as she dove over the railing, knowing she was beyond the grip of the man who was filling her with such terror. Ten feet away, five feet away, faster, she began to leap -

His body collided with hers, wrapping around her and pulling her down, his back smashing into the railing with a painful crack and breaking the impact for her, and both of them hitting the smooth stone of the terrace floor.

He was shaking, nearly hyperventilating, and the look of devastation - of abject _fear_ on the deformed face before her made Christine realize, with a sinking awareness, that he did not want to kill her, at all, and she had nearly jumped to her death.

She was going to be ill.

Pressing her palms and forearms against the cool stone floor, she willed her stomach not to heave, dizzy and disoriented, and he slowly turned his head to face away from her, still not moving from where he lay. The shaking of his back belied the silence, and eventually the sounds of his sobs rang out, grief and wretchedness echoing above the silence of the city at dawn.

"My mask... _please_ ," he finally said in a voice of misery, not even looking back at her, extending one hand in her direction... and then she was crying too.

**XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX**

_Tokyo_

_Present Day._

Christine lay awake in the darkened room, restless with memories. Would they ever do anything but cause one another pain? Even after months had gone by, she still ached with regret at her reaction to his face, the stranger she was shuddering in horror at then was a man she knew now had lived a lifetime of pain. She missed the happy innocence of those lessons, of herself being intoxicated enough on their interactions to almost believe in angels - but almost more so, she missed the days of him believing in _her_ , of each of them not assuming the worst of one another.

Curling up, and trying once more to sleep with a heavy heart, she wondered if there was a way on earth they could ever forgive one another and be happy - realizing just as she drifted off that, for the first time, she was contemplating a future where they were together, happy or not.

**XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author's note: Thank you so much for your reviews and feedback - I can't wait to hear what you think of this flashback, as quite a few of you wonderful readers have been asking for more music and more of the history between these two. I wanted particularly to show how much both of them have grown and changed.
> 
> Also, I've started putting up some of the pictures I use as inspiration for the locations when writing! If you'd like to see Erik's Manhattan apartment, a first class suite on an A380 and more, you can find my posts on either tumblr or livejournal at veroniqueclaire*tumblr*com or veroniqueclaire*livejournal*com . Particularly as they get into some of the more exotic locations in upcoming chapters, there should be some lovely images for you there. Enjoy and please, as always, reviews are the reason I write - I'd love to hear what you think!


	9. Chapter 9

She hadn't done a damn thing wrong, and he was going to have to walk through the door and apologize.

...Without a clock in the room it was hard to tell how long she'd rested, when sleep finally came - but now she was awake and significantly less exhausted; she had probably slept the better part of her first day in Tokyo. The thought sounded strange - for all she knew, this might be her only day in Tokyo - but that would depend upon the plans and concerns of one unacceptably difficult man.

In the moment of an argument, his voice - inevitably raised, sharp, seething - always seemed to cut her to the bone, and from the awful morning she'd first unmasked him to every fight thereafter, she had always spent hours in the aftermath of any confrontation feeling gutted and miserable. Sometimes she felt guilty for what she had done to upset him, sometimes she felt devastated that someone who professed to love her could be so hateful - but today she only felt indignation, pure and bright.

Christine paced the tiny room. It felt like strength, to be stubborn; to be resolute in the knowledge that she was in the _right_ ; that he had invaded her privacy, then _he_ was the one who had been defensive and lashed out when she had confronted him about it. Erik had done wrong by her, twice.

She was angry. She had every right to be. She had no emotional reserves left for dealing with him being completely unreasonable.

...And yet each time her mind tried to tell her that the only thing she was feeling was righteous frustration, the thought rang hollow, like a feeble attempt at convincing herself she wasn't hurt, or trying to prevent herself from being hurt again - when the truth was that she was aching. He seemed so _cruel_ when he was angry - the venomous tone of his voice always seemed to reveal outright hatred, just below the surface - and she wondered bleakly if at this point any feelings he had for her would always be poisoned with the contempt of rejection.

She should be sick and tired of all of this, and yet somehow she just wished he were there so they could just talk, and try for the hundredth time to patch up her hurt feelings and his impossible pride. She just wished - with a dull emptiness that felt insecure and vulnerable - that Erik was there, period.

Dammit. God dammit.

Everything was just so much _easier_ with Raoul. He was so easygoing and casually self-assured that they had always been able to gently talk through any misunderstanding. When she turned down invitations to join the Chagny family and their friends for the holidays in Gstaad or St Barts, Raoul was understanding - even if he didn't really understand her discomfort around the Vanderbilts and Kennedys and other families he'd grown up with. When a lesson running over had made her _hours_ late for a dinner date, Raoul was disappointed but sympathetic, always happy to see her, proud of her for working so hard.

...And when he'd plainly asked if he should be jealous of her complex relationship with her musical teacher, Christine had told him he'd had nothing to fear, and Raoul - sweet, kind, trusting Raoul - had believed her. He'd been so certain of her feelings that he had started cutting deals to try and save her.

A surge of feeling rose up in her chest that might have felt dangerously like guilt, if she had been willing to examine it - but for once, she very much was not. So much had happened in the last two days that it felt like she deserved a vacation from self-reproach. Christine wanted to heal this latest argument with Erik, and get on with wherever they were going next. She didn't want have to think about why. An hour ago she had been staring at the door, frustrated that she would almost certainly have to be the one to offer the olive branch and go outside and get him - but now she had an ideal that felt more comfortably like compromise.

There were precious few things that could pull Erik back to earth when he had flown into one of his rages. Touching him was one; her hand on his shoulder always seemed to crystallize and shatter the armor of his anger. But that wasn't possible without going outside and starting an apology, and she had some obstinate wish for him to come to her, to apologize first. The only other thing that had ever seemed to get through to Erik when he was in his blackest of moods was her voice... and she was overdue for doing her voice exercises anyway...

The acoustics in the saferoom were surreal; the glazed white walls were made of some kind of polymer that seemed to be the exact opposite of the foam acoustic treatment that normally lined rehearsal spaces. She began an old warm-up and heard reverberations and echoes coming from odd angles of the room, and while the ringing didn't sound unpleasant, it was decidedly suboptimal and irritating. What did sound outright unpleasant was her voice itself - even to her own ears, the notes sounded raspy in her upper register, and she could almost physically feel the dryness in her vocal cords from the hours and days on airplanes.

She finished the warm-up in questionable form, and Erik still didn't walk through the door.

Christine took a bottle of water from one of the cabinets and attempted to rehydrate before beginning the exercises anew. It seemed impossible that her voice could fail to reach him as it had before... how many rehearsals had begun with bruised feelings on both sides, only for his defenses to literally melt before her eyes, the rigidity flowing out of his shoulders until his eyes glistened with remorse and renewed affection, once she began to sing?

But she progressed through the exercises a full second time, and then a third, alone. She began to wonder if he was outside, refusing to enter as a match of wills - or if he had ventured out somewhere. He could be gone entirely, and she could be singing to herself in an empty room on the empty mechanical floor of a skyscraper half the world away from everyone else she knew.

It was hard to tell if she was feeling exasperated, or stubborn, or... lonely... but she kept singing. Then, having well and thoroughly finished with the standard warm-up, she moved on to songs of her general practice repertoire, as she idly strolled around the room trying to find a single corner where the acoustics didn't drive her crazy. The center of the room seemed the best, but in such a small space she kept bumping into the bed and finally just flopped sideways across it, frustrated and discouraged and quite ready to be done with this song and give up entirely. The notes came easier, lying on her back, and staring up at a ceiling as smooth and blank as the walls, she briefly remembered Erik bolstering her confidence months ago, with stories of Carlotta having to use tricks like this in the recording studio to hit the high notes that Christine herself could reach while cooking dinner and idly humming.

The noise from the dozens of fans whirring outside the room reached her ears several seconds before Erik entered her field of vision, looming over her, and she realized that he had come back into the room. He had returned to the rigid white mask she was accustomed to seeing him wear, but even with his face more concealed, she could tell he was looking at her with some mix of confusion and discomfort. She swallowed the final notes of the rehearsal song, and said, still looking up at him, "The echos were driving me crazy everywhere else in the room..."

"Ah," he said somewhat stiffly. "I thought perhaps you'd gotten into the liquor cabinet." His joke met with silence, and then he followed up, in what seemed like an attempt to lighten it, "It's half seven; high time for an aperitif in most civilized parts of the world."

His eyes flicked across her for the briefest of seconds and widened - and then she could see the exposed half of his forehead crease rapidly, as he seemed to try and force himself to only look at her eyes. She realized slowly, with something that felt surprisingly like power - he was uncomfortable seeing her lying on the bed.

"No," she said, sitting up and turning around to sit cross legged. She tried to get comfortable again, stretching a bit and eventually resting her head on her hand. "I was busy trying to get back into form and trying to get you to accept my olive branch... I'm glad you finally heard me and did."

He furrowed his brow gently, and seemed confused.

"The room is soundproof," he said hesitantly. "I came in because I was... sorry."

"Oh..." and then she struggled to find the right words, before finally giving up. "I'm surprised, I guess," she said, genuinely meaning it.

He smiled faintly, "As am I."

A long moment, there, and she felt herself inhale and exhale nearly in time with his own breathing, falling into step with him once again, unable to break eye contact... before she finally willed herself to say, "You get so mad at me for not having chosen yet... but Erik, it's your temper that makes me afraid of you."

He flinched subtly, his eyes closing, and he began responding before they were fully open again, "I wish it were that simple."

"It's the _truth_. I'm not afraid of your face. I'm afraid of the way you act when you're angry." The words came out now, all in a rush, and she knew that she was inviting another argument and she didn't care. Better to speak her mind and have it out now, then to spend an awkward evening in a tiny room together. "You're so kind one minute and then you change so quickly... it scares me. I'm sorry."

His eyes were trained on hers, unblinking, and she couldn't tell if he was about to explode in a fresh rage, or in a lament - but he eventually just shook his head, as though she'd said something terribly naive, and said, his mind clearly elsewhere, "That's kind of you to say."

She was staring at the floor by then, worn out at her inability to predict him, when Erik said, "You must be feeling a bit claustrophobic by now. Would you like a small change of scenery?"

...And it sounded like an olive branch of his own.

**XXXXXXXX**

Narrow stairs without a railing, followed by a thin metal catwalk ten feet above the various air-conditioning units and other machinery below; they appeared to be walking along the inside perimeter of the top level of the skyscraper, headed toward the acute angle formed at the corner of the building where two sides came together. Christine did her best to navigate the pitfalls of the precarious walkway, but it was almost unnecessary; Erik felt like a net of security walking behind her, carefully monitoring her steps and pointing out every hazardous turn or gap in the metal grating.

Finally the sharp interior corner of the building was only a half-dozen steps ahead of them, and Christine could have almost touched both walls on either side of her, if she had stretched out her hands.

"I'll need to turn off the torch now, don't walk any further" Erik said, and the small beam of light at their feet vanished as the flashlight went dark. She looked down and to the left and saw his phone illuminated in the darkness as he rapidly typed something into it.

"Who are you calling?" she asked, more teasing than wondering.

"Patience," he murmured, and his tone was finally warm again. "I'm just sending a command to the building's central control system. This should only take a moment... Have you ever heard of electrochromic glass? ...It's a remarkable substance; pass a differential voltage across it and the nano-crystalline film coating the exterior surface will change opacity. Meaning what once was a wall... one moment..."

And then she was surrounded by dazzling light.

"...becomes a window," came the satisfied voice, very close to her ear, now.

It was like being in a forest of high rises, the glowing towers scattered out around her on all sides, stretching toward the black horizon of the night sky. The sheer number of them was dizzying - thousands and thousands, filling her field of view. The collective light from the buildings glowed almost blue, pinpointed at intervals by blinking red lights at the corners of buildings.

"What are the red lights for?" she asked, knowing he would be to pleased be able to tell her.

"Aircraft warning beacons. Prevents lost planes from dropping too low."

There were so many of the beacons that each red point seemed to fade out just as a dozen around it were fading back in, and eventually Christine let her eyes relax out of focus on the skyline, noticing instead the few drops of rain on the surface of the glass before her. The city became streaks and glows behind the scattered raindrops, and the red warning beacons switching on and off atop the skyscrapers were a rising and falling rhythm... it almost seemed like the landscape of Tokyo before her was breathing...

"It's... beautiful," she finally said, surprised to hear her own voice break.

"Yes," he said, sounding distant, or maybe just wistful. "It is."

In a perfect world, in an easy world, she could have taken his hand gently, and held it.

To look out across the glowing metropolis from the viewpoint of a tower that Erik himself had dreamt, and designed, and brought into existence - it felt like triumph. It was humbling to stand beside a person who had accomplished so much, who was capable of almost anything - and who somehow, inexplicably, wanted only her. In a perfect world Christine could have slipped her hand into his and shared the moment of affection, without him demanding a life-long certainty... and without the uncomfortable feeling that it was a betrayal of the other man who was probably sick with worry about her at this very moment.

She turned to face one of the windows and pressed her hands against it, and then gradually her forehead. Her breath fogged the glass, and she closed her eyes.

**XXXXXXXX**

Forty-eight hours later, Christine had read two books, eaten five small meals of canned, dried, or otherwise preserved food, and had been able to get a wonderful amount of sleep - somewhat to her own surprise, even with Erik in the room. When she had first dragged the armchair back in and insisted that he sleep in the peace and quiet of the safe room instead of outside amidst the incessant noise of the fans and mechanical systems, he had resisted, without giving a single actual rationale or reason why it made any sense to have a secret room that was only benefiting one of them. Telling Erik she would feel safer with him in the room had finally changed his mind... and as he turned the chair to face away from the bed where she would be sleeping, she had a better idea of what his actual concern was.

His desire and her confliction were palpable forces in the small space. Every word, every almost-touch was charged and the sensation of walking a tightrope - of needing to walk a precise, narrow line of behavior and words, or to falter and fall completely, irrevocably - was always in the back of her mind, but she pushed it down in favor of other concerns.

Erik's bullet wound was healing steadily, and yet Christine still found herself preoccupied with his recovery; laying out bandages and asking how he was doing, watching subtly to see if he was flinching as he moved around the small space. It was the only time when she felt completely unrestricted in their interactions - unburdened by caution or worries about sending the wrong signal - and it felt strangely like relief.

In some senses it was uncomfortable to be confined to such a small room; to be unable to go anywhere and to have everything from food to reading material be limited by whatever Erik had thought to provision years ago when he'd built this space. And yet as one day rolled into the next with relative calm between the two of them, the limits of the room began to feel like barriers against the outside world; at times, it almost felt like the one place on earth where nothing was demanded of her.

It was an absurd thing to think - she knew with certainty that Erik desired far more than the polite accord that was currently between them. But if she acknowledged only what he actually said, only what he actually asked - then he was asking nothing of her she couldn't give. After weeks of sobbing through conversations with Raoul about his plans to free her forever, after weeks of the managers and the FBI agents and everyone else she encountered trying to move her around like a pawn, all on top of rehearsals and costume fittings and chorus members hissing cruel remarks... this room where all she had to do was _exist_ was almost a refuge from what her life had become.

The hiss of pain as Erik stood up was slight, but she noticed it immediately. "You're wincing," she said. "Does it hurt again?"

"Saying 'yes' would imply the pain had ever stopped." He smiled grimly, "it's just going to mild agony for a few days; these things always are."

Ignoring for the moment why he would know that, she asked feebly, "Do you want some... ibuproffen?"

He chuckled dismissively, but followed up gently, "Painkillers have to be significantly stronger than that before they do me any good, I'm afraid. Some of the more sophisticated opioids work well... but I have to watch myself around them."

"You sound like Meg talking about carbs." Christine said, scoffing good-naturedly. "I couldn't imagine you had to watch yourself around anything... You're more in control than anyone else I've ever met."

His visible eyebrow raised.

He said nothing, but the moment grew exceptionally uncomfortable, as his unwavering gaze remained on her, not a word actually uttered, but his expression clearly replying, " _Seriously_."

She broke eye contact, nearly squirming against the intensity, and looked down.

"I _have_ to be," he said flatly.

"You think you do," she replied, before thinking consciously what she meant to convey, and then faltered, "...but ...I wish you didn't."

"What I _think_ ," he said coolly - then seemed to halt himself and switch to a more genteel approach, "...is that we have had quite enough of this conversation for today. What would you like for dinner, my dear?"

"I'd like…" she hesitated, and without worrying about the specifics, just spoke honestly, "I'd just like for us to just be ourselves around one another and not to have to worry about walking on eggshells and holding back."

"As the one of us privy to the thoughts in my head, let me assure you, holding back is the only option" he said, with politeness stretched taut over the unyielding sentiment below, manners strained to the breaking point, commanding that the subject was closed. But the obvious discomfort in his tone had the unexpected side effect of making her wonder what could be so terrible...

"Why don't you tell me, and let me judge for myself what I do and do not want?" She tilted her chin up, feigning the physical confidence to match words that were uncertain the moment they left her mouth.

It was so rare, to see him speechless... but it took only a few moments for him to gather his wits and cooly reply, "What is this, morbid curiosity?"

"It's not... morbid."

"You're far too old to be naive about these things." HIs eyes flared, but they seemed to be trying to read her as much as she was trying to read him. "What do you want? To feel some thrill of power that I desire you and have to expend considerable energy to keep from ever touching you? To know the specifics and decide if my libido is as demented as my visage? The truth of the matter is, I wouldn't even have to tell you a single salacious detail. All I would have to say is that I love you, and what I _want_ is to marry you - and even those noble sentiments are enough to fill you with horror."

As calmly as she could manage, tears threatening to spill and chin quivering, Christine replied, "...Please stop telling me what I feel."

"I'm telling you what I see, and what I cannot ever erase from my mind. Even if I couldn't see your blatant revulsion, I can see my own face in the mirror, and know what anyone would feel toward me."

"Your eyes deceive you." She threw the words out, bitterly, defeated, on the verge of crying again because surely this was turning into another argument - but she couldn't back down again.

He said nothing in response but just looked at her with an expression she couldn't read in his eyes.

A long minute passed, before he finally straightened his shoulders. "I forget that you are not as used to immuring situations as I am; this confinement must be muddling your thoughts. Would you like to go out for dinner?" He asked, as if the choice were as casual to go out to the neighborhood bistro or stay in and order pizza - and the absurdity of the statement, of the rapid fire changes in his temperament, were such that she nearly laughed, in spite of the patronizing tone with which he'd begun his response, in spite of the intensity of their exchange just seconds before.

"Is it... safe?" she eventually asked, not really knowing what the word would even mean. Had Agent Khan followed them to Asia? Would the citizens of Tokyo recognize them as fugitives? Funny, to think so naturally of them both being fugitives, instead of as a fugitive and his victim...

"While you've been perusing the library and catching up on sleep, I've been monitoring the manhunt."

"How?"

He chuckled, and she thought fleetingly how melodious even the most casual sounds were, when he was pleased with something.

"Little-known secret outside the software industry is that the privatized email systems written by contract agencies are generally significantly less secure than the options available to the public. Think of it this way - the great software engineers become dotcom millionaires. The mediocre ones get good at scare tactics and sales pitches, then cater to the government. Lazy coders leave back doors lying around the software out of incompetence, or so they can come in and do maintenance later. And a digital means of entry is as intriguing a challenge to me as a physical one..." He shrugged. "I believe I mentioned to you once, I am exceptionally fond of trap doors."

"Agent Khan's emails say they're not in Tokyo, then?"

"Not even close," he replied with confident amusement. "I've been biding my time on venturing out, simply because every additional day gave us more time for news stories to drop off the front page, more time for people to forget - but truth be told, the media frenzy over your disappearance was largely contained to North America."

"...Was?" she asked, the word itself a tipping point in everything she had lived in the last few days - and uncertainty seeped in as she wondered whether to feel liberated or forgotten.

"The world is full of disasters and distractions," Erik said knowingly. "The reporters seem to be moving on. The investigation will continue until they've exhausted the budget your government is willing to spend, and if that hotheaded young man is even half-earnest, he'll be contacting K&R and hostage retrieval firms in the private sector for some months to come. But more and more in the coming weeks, it will only be the agents and officers we need to avoid; the average citizens won't know or care who we are."

"That makes me feel…" She had no idea. "Safer, I guess."

"Good," he said, with surprising tenderness, before returning to a tone of voice that sounded more apropos for military tactical discussions. "Then I've accomplished what I intended, here. But it won't be entirely easy. Digital surveillance is orders of magnitude cheaper and easier to facilitate than physically sending agents to investigate, and will go on far longer. Both of us will need to be excessively careful about which phone lines we use for the forseeable future, and standard email will probably never again be an option. Prism and Carnivore are the tip of the iceberg in terms of the current world state of intrusive monitoring of electronic communications…"

He made a gesture of exasperation, as though this were something they both knew and mutually loathed. Trying to stay focused on the facts, she asked, "So… what does that mean, in terms of everyday life?"

"Would you like a long lecture about deep packet inspection and transport layer security fingerprinting… or would you rather I just show you the magnificent technology for evading it, so we can leave this room all the quicker?"

"What if you just tell me what I need to know in an emergency - but you can tell me all the details later?" Christine asked, unable to resist a light smile, at giving the answer she knew would make him happy.

"…You're taking to my world remarkably well," he murmured affectionately, before turning to reach into one of his bags.

"This," he said, placing a smooth black usb drive into her hand, "is a shortcut. The software on it is public and open source, and if you ever need it again, you can get it from one of several hundred mirror hosts. But in an crisis, having it locally might save you a few minutes. It's an anonymity network, with a decidedly unsophisticated name," he said, his lip curling as he said it aloud, "but the software itself is extremely elegant. It relays your internet traffic through a successive series of anonymous hosts, so the source and destination are obscured. The email client is a hidden service on the network, and if you use the appropriate encryption of the message itself, no one will be able to infer the geolocation of the sender besides the intended recipient. If we ever, ever become separated, this is the way that you can be guaranteed to contact me."

"Separated?" she said, surprised at the alarm in her own voice.

"It's a large planet," he said, as though it were a longstanding personal frustration, "And I am not a particularly patient man when it comes to your safety. I will always find you; I will always make sure you're safe… but if you ever wanted to facilitate that process, I wouldn't particularly mind."

"Ok," she said, a bit overwhelmed, "What's the address, once I have the hidden message service?"

"Ah," he said, his temperament lightening as it always did when he discussed one of his accomplishments, "I'm rather proud of this one. The address is the nineteen-digit serial number that is laser engraved on the girdle of the diamond in the pretty little ring I gave you.

She blinked, looking down at the stone. "I don't see how that's possible."

"It's there. You'll need to use a magnifying loupe to read it - there's one in your suitcase, or you can go to a jeweler under the pretense of having the stone cleaned. Then buy a new laptop, install the software, and contact me immediately. If we are in sufficiently extreme circumstances that I cannot find you myself, time will very much be of the essence."

"You keep using that phrase. 'Extreme circumstances.'"

He shrugged. "It's all I've ever known."

Before she could ponder that further, he went on, "This is the only safe means of communication. You must have that number."

"So," she said, examining the stone and trying to see the engraving with her bare eyes, "That's why you said I must never take the ring off"

"…Yes," he said, looking away from her, his shields visibly up again. "Precisely."

**XXXXXXXX**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello dear readers!
> 
> The more I write for these two, the more I find there is to write - this chapter was supposed to take them to an entirely different continent, but I found there was so much still to be worked out before they even left the room. Oh, those complex emotions.
> 
> Hopefully this chapter is satisfying for the readers who had been getting frustrated with Christine's indecision so far. She's getting stronger and more confident, but she has a ways to go before she could possibly meet Erik on equal terms, and I'm still aiming for that; I think it's a more powerful choice if she's capable and confident when she chooses. (Although getting these characters to the point of a relationship that even approaches "healthy" in the eyes of a modern reader is a significant challenge. :-)
> 
> And for my technical readers, yes: I'm alluding to the software here rather than mentioning it by name - it's gotten a lot of bad press lately and I'd rather avoid tech politics - but suffice it to say, I think it can be an incredibly useful tool for good people who find themselves in bad situations. I've taken a few other liberties to streamline the narrative (assume offscreen PGP key exchanges, etc) but otherwise, as always, the details are researched and as real as I can make them. (And if you find a glitch, I'd love to know.)
> 
> New background photos are up as well, for those who would like to see a bit more of this world, at veroniqueclaire*tumblr*com or veroniqueclaire*livejournal*com .
> 
> Thank you so much for your wonderful, insightful, heartfelt, witty and enthusiastic reviews - I love to hear everything you're thinking, and truly - truly - your reviews are the thing that motivates me to write, so even a quick word is encouraging.
> 
> ~Ver


	10. Chapter 10

Corridors, key codes, a different elevator, and then they emerged out of a tunnel and were walking along a nearly empty subway platform.

"If you wouldn't mind wearing this for the next fifteen minutes," Erik said, withdrawing what looked to be two folded pieces of white paper from the interior pocket of his jacket. She looked up just as they rounded the corner into a main corridor of the subway station, crowded with hundreds of people all wearing black overcoats and white surgical masks like the one she now held in her hands. Realizing that it was another form of disguise, she quickly put it on, doing as best she could to slip it over her ears beneath today's dark wig. The sudden onslaught of humanity after so many days with Erik as the only person in her realm of existence was startling - and she had a fleeting sensation of loss that she didn't entirely understand.

"Isn't it marvelous? Everyone walks around behind a paper mask, for their own health." Erik's murmur sounded as though it came from directly beside her ear, even though he was clearly in front of her. "I wish more of the world's metropolises had Tokyo's emphasis on hygiene and epidemiological prevention." They walked on, completely anonymous in the crowd, for several minutes in silence, before he idly added, "Lovely town. I could spend months here."

His tone was full of disaffection, but beneath the surface of his light spirits was clearly a lifetime of experiences she had never suffered. Christine couldn't imagine taking such pleasure in blending in while standing in a crowd or in having her identity concealed from view as she walked down the street; she could imagine the life that had led him to those feelings, and it filled her with a dull sadness.

Three escalators and they emerged at street level onto a darkened plaza; a bridge over a multi-lane road, the cars headlights glowing bluish white here instead of yellow, and Erik mentioned something about improved LED efficiency before saying they needed to keep moving - as she stood, momentarily mesmerized by the flow of thousands of cars passing under them in the night, like a river of fireflies.

Down the stairs, down a road with businesses mostly closed and then abruptly into an alleyway between six-story tall buildings pressed too close to one another for a car to possibly drive through. Neon signs in Katakana characters flickered in the distance on both sides of the street, their glow amplified by the clouds of steam pouring up from grates in the ground, backlit by the few streetlights at the end of the block.

Erik had been walking so quickly that she was once again struggling to keep up with him, but his pace seemed to slow as they reached the midpoint of the alley, and he gestured with his right hand in a movement that was not entirely clear - one finger straight out, pointing diagonally away from him at the ground, two, three swooping around and up to the left…

The blast of steam from the vent she hadn't even noticed under her feet was suddenly hot and blinding, and she was stumbling forward and trying to get her bearings as she felt an arm around her waist pulling her off her feet entirely and Erik was shouldering open a door and quickly shutting it behind them.

"Obfuscation," he intoned, then pointed ahead of them, down a dimly lit beige corridor, and she followed. He palmed open a worn door with a small eye-level window, and suddenly they were in a hallway with opulent, if rather excessive, decor.

Erik made a dismissive hand gesture at the walls or perhaps their designer, and walked forcefully toward the end. They turned left and were abruptly in a hotel lobby with dozens of guests coming and going, and just as it had been in the subway, she felt a surge of surprise to be suddenly surrounded by humanity once again. Maneuvering out past bellmen and baggage carts to the front of the building, Erik gestured at the short taxi queue, and Christine stepped into the line behind him, as though they were ordinary hotel guests.

**XXXXXXXX**

The restaurant entrance was only slightly more obscure than the side door to the hotel; Erik ordered the taxi to pull into the loading bay of a large office building and then sent the driver away with a large stack of paper yen. He strode decisively across the shadowy concrete bays and knocked on a metal door, then said something sharply in what must have been Japanese; the door slid open and after a few more words, the stern man behind it bowed and gestured to the stairs inside.

It would have been intimidating, if not for Erik's calm presence indicating that he considered this a logical turn of events, and she followed him up the plain, dark staircase inside, and then through the next door that gave way to a tastefully decorated low-lit restaurant. A man approached them and bowed, before leading them to a table at the end of a row of curtained booths. Christine barely had time to hand her jacket to the man before he lowered the curtains, sealing off the booth where she and Erik were now seated.

She had seen private booths at restaurants before - a few places in New York had them, and Sorelli had always regaled the dancers with tales of the cocaine-fueled escapades that went on behind the velvet curtains, whenever one of her dates had turned particularly salacious. But Christine had never before seen an entire restaurant of them, and said as much to Erik as he perused a menu written in Japanese.

"Ah," he said, seeming a bit embarrassed and quickly attempting to smooth over her impression. "This isn't a refuge for celebrity bad behavior; it's an industry establishment. I first came here when I was working on a brief contract for a particular… I suppose they would call themselves a 'chivalrous organization' - a few years back."

She nodded, but he seemed to sense her relative unease.

"You must know I wouldn't bring you anywhere… unseemly," he said emphatically. "The clientele here are respected businessmen, however atypical the industry - and the security is second to none."

Tea arrived, poured by a deferent server with dark tattoos showing at the wrists and collar of his long-sleeved shirt, and she wondered about exactly what industry Erik had been working in besides architecture.

**XXXXXXXX**

Six courses, an amuse-bouche, and a palate-cleansing sorbet; sake pairings with each course; dishes swept away in synchronized motion by servers the instant both she and Erik had set down their polished steel chopsticks. It felt like a Michelin-starred speakeasy, but she couldn't shake the feeling that all of the formality of the service and the fineness of the cuisine was just a thin shell of artifice concealing something sinister. Was there a mafia in Japan? Had Erik really worked for them?

She needed to know, somehow, and yet she couldn't find ways to ask these things that didn't make her intention painfully clear - that she was still trying to figure out her feelings about him, and that his past and the things he'd done might sway her one way or another. It was hard to ask him anything about himself - his defenses came up so quickly if the question seemed like anything beyond innocent curiosity on her part. But there were so many things she was truly was curious about...

Erik poured himself another cup of green tea, and he seemed to have actually had more tea than nourishment that night - even with the miniscule servings of intricately prepare food, he'd taken few actual bites of the meal. Christine wondered, idly, if it was difficult to eat with the mask on, and wondered if they would ever be comfortable enough around one another for him to take it off willingly. It was a welcome interruption when he asked if he should ask for another pot of tea.

"No, but thank you," she replied, "I feel like I'm finally getting over the jetlag here, I probably shouldn't tempt fate with caffeine."

"'You are so _virtuous_ ," he said, in mild astonishment, "I wonder what life is like to one as untempted by vice as you are. I know full well what the prevailing medical recommendations are to feel 'healthy, wealthy and wise,' and I can't be particularly bothered to abide by any of them."

"...Do you think I'm boring?" She interjected, the feelings of hurt twisting unexpectedly.

"No... not in the least," he tilted his head, regarding her curiously. "I just prefer to be in control of the mechanisms, myself. It's almost like dictates of healthy living are a challenge to be overcome with the proper combination of chemicals. Prescriptions to wake, to sleep, and so on; it's all on my own terms."

"You're lucky to have that luxury," she said, making full eye contact as she ventured to confront him. "Most people can't afford to gamble with their health."

His mismatched eyes met hers, and were steeley for several long seconds, before he relented. "You're probably right. I likely picked up the habit in the years when I was less fond of living than I am now…" He gave her a poignant look, then busied himself with the bill. "Are you ready to leave, then? The most discreet option is for us to take one of the house towncars to a railway station and then return to the saferoom via train."

"'Railway station,'" she said, trying the phrase out with a smile. "It's funny - I always thought you were British, from some of the words you use, and your accent-"

His visible eyebrow raised. "I have an accent?" He said wryly.

"It's a _nice_ accent," she hastened to add. "You sound… distinguished. But a while back you mentioned we might need to pass for being British, with the British passports, and so I imagine you must not actually be from there…"

His amusement seemed to stiffen, and he replied in a clipped tone. "One does need to belong somewhere to be from anywhere. I haven't had the fortune of a homeland."

For some reason, she pressed on."Were you born in England, though?"

"I was born in the Northwest of France, and if I were a legitimate citizen of any nation it would likely be there. I learned English because the tutor they sent to my house to teach the freak who couldn't go to school with the other children - that tutor happened to be a British expat. English is in theory my second language, but in many senses it would be the first, since my mother had hardly spoken to me, in French or any other language." The emotionless, matter-of-fact tone concealed little, but he seemed to gather himself and continue brusquely. "Shall I have the driver pull the car around so we can go? We'll be flying out tomorrow morning, you'll want to get rest."

"Erik… I'm sorry," she said, trying to catch his eye. "I want to know more about you, even if it hasn't all been happy."

"You want to know if I am broken beyond repair." Wounded eyes met her own, defensive, wary.

"...I just want to know you, period," she replied.

**XXXXXXXX**

_Tokyo to Seoul; 763 miles, 2 hours._

Christine stood on tip toes, looking into the mirror of a blush compact she had placed on a shelf, trying to adjust what must have been the 8th wig she'd worn in half as many days. The bathroom in this safehouse was larger - the safehouse itself must have been five times as big, concealed within a drab warehouse in the Guro district, not far from the airport, with a separated sleeping and sitting room, and a design scheme that was just as minimalist as the previous, but in an entirely different direction. Whereas the room in Tokyo had been glossy and white, this space was done in shades of grey and dark brown, stark lines and muted colors. When she had asked about the unexpected design penchant for greige, he had dismissed it by saying, with a shrug "It was the nineties."

She hadn't been old enough to drive in 1999, and he'd been designing buildings by then.

Her thoughts had grown black throughout the afternoon. He was easily fifteen years older than her, possibly more - and he was infinitely more accomplished. For all his professions of adoration, what was it that he truly could see in her? A pretty enough young woman with a good enough voice, who'd been at the right place and the right time when he'd decided to join humanity and fall in love?

This line of thinking was getting her nowhere but miserable, and now, trying to get this wig to stop slipping off, and looking into her own tiny makeup mirror - because the bathroom itself naturally had none - she was frustrated and irritable.

"Any chance you've got scissors hiding somewhere around here?" She called out without looking up from the mirror, almost speaking more to herself out of frustration than actually to him - but even at several times larger than the previous room, there was no place within this dwelling that was actually out of earshot.

Almost absent-mindedly, Erik wandered in, looking down at a paper in his hand, and placed a small pair of scissors on the countertop. "Trimming the wig?" he asked without looking up as he walked out again, apparently engrossed in some sheet music.

"Either the wig, or my own hair," she said exasperatedly. "I kind of want to chop it all off. It would make all the wigs easier"

"No - don't," he spoke swiftly, before some sense of propriety or something else strangled the rest of his response. He turned back to look at her in alarm.

"Why?" She asked, still halfway joking, and not realizing quite how serious he was.

"Just... _don't_." he said. "I... I don't like the idea of you having to do that, because of all this." He gestured around at the room, at their suitcases in the corner, and looked extraordinarily uncomfortable.

She cocked her head and watched him shift awkwardly, for a moment. "Is that really it?"

He glowered at her, and with a flutter of power in her stomach, she knew the real reason.

"...Do you like my hair long?" she asked.

Erik looked so exposed in that moment, his eyes so vulnerable and embarrassed that she felt ashamed for prying - then the exposed half of his face hardened, and for the first time she could see it plainly; his anger was a shield.

"Yes," he said venomously, "I do. Must you wrench every detail free from my chest? For a woman who feels nothing but revulsion for me, you certainly have a fascination with the _specifics_ of my feelings for you."

She steeled herself, vowed not to crumple again, not to lose her steadiness. "Is it easier to tell yourself that I revile you, than it is to deal with the truth?" she replied, as calmly as she could, "The truth is I don't know how I feel, but I am frightened of your temper. You're a jerk when you feel threatened."

His jaw dropped, and she readied herself for an outburst, but none came, and emboldened, she continued, softening her tone. "I mean it. You might just be acting defensive, but it kills me. I can't go on being afraid of the next explosion."

Their eyes met, and she tried desperately to read the expression in his… and came away with the impression that he was doing the same toward her. He seemed to realize for the first time that he was still holding the stack of sheet music before him, and blinking, set about straightening the various pages. Without looking up, and with some sentiment in his voice that mixed both fondness and bewilderment, he murmured, "No one has ever called me a 'jerk', before."

"I'm sorry… but Erik, it's true."

"It just seems so… trifling. Phrased as such." He seemed to be still looking down at the sheet music without actually seeing it, his mind elsewhere.

"When you get angry," she said shakily, "the tone of your voice has such... oh it's like acid, the contempt. You sound like you hate me; every word seems to imagine the very worst of me. I don't see how you could speak to me that way if you truly loved me."

At that, his head jerked up, and his eyes finally met hers again.

"You say that," he began hesitantly, the gorgeous richness of his voice vibrating in the air, the first time she'd noticed it in days, "...You say that like you're afraid that I don't love you."

She nodded, wary, questioning.

"...Instead of being afraid that I do," he said cautiously, with guarded wonder in his eyes.

**XXXXXXXX**

_Seoul to Istanbul; 4940 miles, 12 hours_

The sunlight glinting on the Bosphorus was dazzling, and there seemed to be water, hills, and bridges at every turn as the towncar made its way from the airport to the city center, a uniformed driver at the wheel. Where Tokyo and Seoul had been chilly and still clinging to to the end of winter, Istanbul seemed to be fully flung into spring; clear air, soft breezes, green trees and sunshine. They'd seen precious little daylight in the last week, and the skies had always been overcast; the tiny white clouds dotting the sky here looked almost cartoonishly happy by comparison.

"You look pleased," he ventured, offering nothing with his words and the world with his tone. She wondered if he thought he was speaking with great casualness and disaffect - when it was clear he cared desperately about her answer. As she struggled for an answer, he quickly added, "The privacy window is up, the driver can't hear you."

"It's not that," she said, unsure of what to say. "It's just… I don't think I'd ever seen pictures of what Istanbul looked like. This looks more like Vancouver than Iraq."

Erik looked mildly horrified at her comparison, and she wondered fleetingly just how wrong her geographic assumptions had been - but he seemed to swallow his concern and continue politely.

"Vancouver… So you had left the States before. I couldn't find any record of an existing passport for you, but I considered that you might have traveled before the borders were hardened in 2001."

"Yeah, I was just a kid and I think a birth certificate was enough to get to Canada back then," she replied, nonplussed at this point by his admissions of having researched her. "After mom died, I went wherever my dad went." She paused, remembering, then shook it off, "I think he was taking gigs farther and farther from home, whether or not it was consciously."

Erik frowned lightly, "Touring with a band is no place for a child."

"The Scandanavian folk-music scene wasn't as debauched as you might imagine," she said, teasing gently. "Most of the guys in Dad's band had girlfriends or wives traveling with us; so there was always someone to look after me backstage. I loved running around each new music hall during sound check; sometimes the the bartenders would let me play with the soda gun."

She smiled, at Erik's disapproving glance, and continued, "This was before I had a music teacher telling me the cola would wreck my voice. I remember this one woman setting up the bar in Portland - she gave me a cup full of maraschino cherries, and let me pick out songs on the jukebox. I was maybe eight, and I had this dream that she was my long-lost older sister and would take care of me forever."

"What on earth was your father doing, that you needed barmaids to take care of you?" Erik said, his disdain clear.

"Grieving," she answered, her chin firm. "He'd just lost the love of his life."

Erik winced, and emotion briefly flickered across his face, before he wrenched it back. "His only job on earth was to ensure you were cared for."

"He worked as hard as he could to keep the two of us fed - and that was almost more than he could handle," she replied matter-of-factly.. "Dad was born to be a musician, not to deal with life. Most of the time it was me taking care of him, even before the cancer."

Erik regarded her strangely, as though he were judging her response. "He failed you, and you forgive him."

"We forgive a lot in the people we love," she said, wondering if it was the first time someone had explained human relationships to him. "It''s not black and white... that he either failed me or he didn't. He was the father I had. Maybe some other dad would have been competent and confident and - I don't know - 'financially capable'. But maybe that dad would have been boring and distant and only cared about sports or politics or the stock market. Raoul's dad was like that, honestly. I had a dad who loved me; it was enough."

He visibly stiffened at her mention of Raoul, but seemed sufficiently distracted by processing the rest of what she'd had to say. "...And the touring took him to New York?" he asked, appearing eager to fill the silence.

"No," she said sadly. "Once Dad got sick we needed to be in one place for the chemo, so we wound up in Brooklyn. He hoped he'd still be able to find work as a studio musician there, even if he couldn't tour, but... his health just went downhill so fast."

"I'm sorry - this is obviously causing you pain. I should never have asked."

"It's ok," she said, with a sad smile, blinking back the tears that had welled up. "It's been years.. I think I'll always be sad. But I'd rather be sad than never talk about him again. Really."

A comfortable silence fell over the car as he leaned back into his seat and she resumed looking out the window.

The streets were crowded with cars, bicycles, and pedestrians, and Christine noted the women were wearing everything from tank tops to full-length robes and headscarves. The businesses were just as varied in their mix, and she thought she even recognized a brand or two before suddenly she burst out laughing. "There's a _Starbucks_ ," she said, as Erik turned his head to look at her. "Here! I'm sorry... I know it's ridiculous, but it's felt like I've been in some parallel universe this whole time. And then we landed here, and everything seemed so different, still…"

"Yes," Erik said slowly, "The American coffee chains have made quite the expansion into Europe…. which is where we are at the moment. Istanbul is a thriving metropolis in a secular country. Did you have a different impression?"

"I didn't… I guess I didn't know what to expect," she said abashedly. "On the news they always talk about Middle Eastern countries as being so dangerous."

"People do prefer to fear what they don't understand," he said coolly, his tone more sad than hostile. "Dangerous is a broad generalization. There is conflict at Turkey's South-Eastern border but that's nearly a thousand miles away. You lived in New York. Would you have left if there was unrest in Miami?"

"Of course not…" she looked out the window again, at the granite buildings and streetcars and that beautiful blue water in the distance. "It's just… when you've never been anywhere, all you have to go on is what they show you on the news."

"I'd like to take you _everywhere_ ," he said in a low voice, catching her gaze and holding it.

**XXXXXXXX**

Nothing was ever direct with their transportation and true to form, Erik had the driver drop them at an antiques market, then set off in the opposite direction up a steep, tree-lined street once the towncar was out of sight. She followed, suitcase bouncing on the cobblestones, and wordlessly stepped behind him as he gestured to a wooden gate leading to an narrow, unpaved alleyway leading between a row of tall houses and apartment buildings.

"There is a front door," Erik said, gesturing at the rickety building to their left, "but it rather annoyingly faces the street, so I've had it boarded shut. Keeps up appearances."

Her eyes widened as she took in the ramshackle unpainted wooden house towering over them, its architectural style somewhat Victorian and wholly neglected. His comment finally made sense when, after a labyrinthine series of gates, doors, and old-fashioned key-locks, they actually entered the house, and looking back over her shoulder at her suitcase, she noticed the shiny lacquered wood-inlay floors. Letting the door fall shut behind her - somehow, still surprised, even after every time he'd surprised her before - she turned and let her jaw drop as she took in the interior of the building, as stunning and modern as the exterior was antiquated and decayed.

A marble staircase with a cast-iron banister arched upstairs, flanked by walls painted an immaculate shade of white, corniced and embellished with moldings that were both modern and classic at once. At the top of the stairs was a small suite with a sitting room and a bedroom, whose similarly refined white walls contrasted with the rough wooden beam ceiling soaring nearly twenty feet overhead.

"Erik…" she said, not even knowing where to begin, "this is beautiful."

"Does it suit you?" he asked, looking over his shoulder at her. "It's more of a 'secure property' than a proper panic room, but it is rather well disguised in plain sight. It's one of my more recent efforts, I finished it probably… well, it must have been just over a year and a half ago."

"Have you been back here since then?" Christine asked, still looking around at the beauty of the space, and the mix of old and new.

"No…" he said, and paused. "Once I met you, I felt a rather powerful urge to stay in Manhattan. I'd planned to only be there for a few months, but..."

Trailing her fingers across a dark wooden desk, Christine, frowned, her thoughts solidifying, but not on the words he'd just said. "If you haven't been here in more than a year, why isn't it covered in dust?"

Erik uttered a word that sounded like, "Haichvack," looking at her quizzically.

"I don't know what that means."

"'Heating, Ventilation, Air and Cooling' - think of it as a sophisticated, automated, climate control," he said. "It's been running since last I was here. All circulating air goes through heavy filtration."

"Isn't that... expensive?" Christine asked, and at his gentle eye-roll and hand gesture of flitting away something that didn't matter, she added, "or at least, bad for the environment?"

"My optimistic dear" he said blithely. "I can hardly be bothered to give a damn about the people currently on this planet, let alone the ones who will walk it after I've finally - and in all likelihood, explosively - freed myself from this mortal coil." She rubbed her forehead at the sharpness, at the quippy non-realness of his answer, and he seemed to see it and soften. "But if it bothers you, I could probably pay someone to come in and clean once a month. Maybe a charity that employs the underprivileged - orphans are carbon neutral, yes?"

She glowered at him. Waiting for him to realize, and feel remorse. It took a solid minute of dagger eyes before he suddenly blinked in recognition of what he'd said.

"Christ, I'm sorry."

"You ought to be," she said indignantly, almost proud of finally feeling unequivocally justified in being pissed at something he'd said.

"You must realize - I've gone so long without ever having to worry about the effect my words had on another person." He looked at her helplessly, and she relented.

"Erik, I… I wish you could have the same concern for the rest of humanity's existence that you have for mine."

"...The ceiling beams are pine," he said, changing the subject, "They should be lovely for acoustics, if you'd like to have a lesson?"

**XXXXXXXX**

Strangely, surprisingly, by the tenth day she had fallen into life in Istanbul, with Erik, in a house that was a mansion inside and a seemingly condemned eyesore outside. His hypervigilance had relaxed, gradually, such that he was no longer fearful of her standing too close to windows, or constantly quizzing her on potential exit paths or passport stashes. They had begun to venture out - first to secretive dining establishments as they'd been to in Tokyo, and then to secluded dining rooms in mainstream restaurants.

Some days she missed Raoul. Other days she felt guilty for not missing him more. Neither feeling was something she could do anything about at the moment - on another continent, on the lam, completely powerless except for the influence she had with Erik - and so Christine forced the thoughts from her head. She had spent years of her life drowning in sorrow and helplessness and loss; she couldn't afford to feel those things now. And so, from one strange day in a life outside her life, to the next day, she just lived. Erik took care of the rest.

One night, pleasantly fatigued from a particularly long vocal lesson, sitting in a jewelry box of a private glass room at a restaurant, surrounded on three sides by windows with the fourth wall open - lamps glowing golden in every corner of the room, and more lights of the city rolling down the hillside below the restaurant - Erik conversing fluently with the servers and explaining the delicate spices of each dish to her as it arrived - she thought that it might be possible to simply decide to be happy, and to possibly do so now.

**XXXXXXXX**

With time, Christine felt more comfortable, more secure; she stopped wearing the wigs entirely in favor of a modest headscarf, and her heart no longer leapt out of her chest when Erik abruptly stopped them in their tracks for a perceived threat that inevitably turned out to be benign.

She wandered into her bedroom one afternoon, thinking to curl up on her bed with a book for the evening - and found a tower of black boxes tied with a black grosgrain ribbon in the center of the bed. The top box held a pair of sparkly earrings; the middle a pair of navy blue evening shoes. Lifting the lid of the largest box and pushing aside the crisp black tissue paper, she saw a mountain of silk chiffon in a beautiful dark slate blue color. Lifting it by the shoulders, she could tell - this wasn't just a dress, this was an full-on _gown_...

"The İstanbul Devlet Senfoni Orkestrası is playing tonight - that's the symphony. I thought you might like to attend. Box seats." Erik leaned in the doorway, rather transparently affecting nonchalence.

"The symphony? Oh, that would be wonderful." ...To go out in the world a bit more, something other than utter privacy and secrecy all the time. He smiled at her obvious delight, and she couldn't resist asking innocently, "Not the opera, though?"

"Too soon," he replied decisively, with a knowing half-smile that suggested he'd seen right through her. He turned to leave, and called out as he walked away, "we have an early dinner reservation; get dressed."

"Thank you," she interjected before he could walk too far, "for planning an evening out. And for the dress; I think it's just lovely."

He stopped in his tracks and tilted his head back toward her, but didn't fully turn around. "I'm glad," he said, then hastened away.

**XXXXXXXX**

"Lovely," was an understatement; the dress was beautiful, with the sort of eternal elegance she associated with old movies, and she wondered how he'd come to choose it for her. The full skirt swept the sidewalk and the chiffon straps over her shoulders fluttered in the light breeze as she stepped out of the towncar. The early evening hours were warm here, and she carried her coat for later draped over one arm. Erik's hand was a palpable presence behind her elbow, guiding without ever touching, as he moved them across the sidewalk, toward a massive stone building with Roman columns on either side of a carved copper doorway.

"It was a bank, many years ago," he explained, gesturing at the soaring dome thirty feet above them, as they walked inside. "Most of the buildings on this street still are, in fact; Voyvoda Caddesi was the financial center of the Ottoman Empire. This one has just been converted to serve a more interesting function."

The space was cavernous, with an elegant lounge on the ground level, full of chic Istanbulites sipping wine at a polished silver art deco bar with a mahogany countertop. At the rear of the building on the right side, a curving staircase led to the restaurant on the mezzanine level upstairs, and long metal beams supporting a stylish lighting fixture were suspended over the bar area, dangling on wires bolted into the ceiling easily fifty feet above.

A suited maître d' guided them up the staircase, with excessive politeness and making no mention of the flesh-toned mask Erik wore; he led them to a table at the edge of the mezzanine, which had several other parties already dining at the early hour.

"Erik," Christine whispered, half shocked and half pleased, "We're at a public restaurant, at a table in the same room as everyone else."

"Well, it's still the _best_ table," he said, the corner of his mouth threatening a smile. "And the most secluded from the rest of the restaurant, with a clear view of the exits. I will always prefer dimly lit restaurants and private rooms, but with a sufficient fee to 'confirm the reservation,'" - and here he raised his visible eyebrow - "one can more or less ensure reasonable decorum at some public establishments. And I know you wanted to leave the house more."

"Thank you," she said, feeling a small burst of optimism, at the idea that he would do something he disliked, just to meet her wishes.

Midway through the second course he looked sharply to the left and dropped his fork with a clatter. She bent over to pick it up off the floor, only to find his hand reaching over, pressing on the back of her shoulder, keeping her bent down below the edge of the stainless steel planter boxes bordering the balcony.

"Stay low," he said in a sharp, low voice.

"What do you mean?" she asked… before realizing, as though the previous week's concerns had been a century before, a different life, "Is it Agent Khan?"

"No," he said in a voice that was tinged with anger. "Significantly worse. I'm so sorry; this was a terrible mistake."

"Erik, what -"

"Do you trust me?" He leaned over, so that his eyes could meet hers. "I need you to do what I say, even if what it doesn't immediately make sense, even if it seems dangerous. Do you trust me, Christine?"

"Yes," she whispered immediately.

"Then we're going to live."

**XXXXXXXX**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dear Readers, you amaze me - your reviews and PMs (and I heard there might be fanart?) - hearing from all of you is the fuel that inspires me to keep writing, and that keeps this story growing longer.
> 
> I love hearing about what you like, what you didn't like, and what you think is coming next. And I adore hearing your casting suggestions as well! I know all too well how a good actor or actress can change your opinion of a role entirely. (It was Ramin Karimloo's Phantom that inspired me to pick this story up again last year, and having just seen Jeremy Hays' floppy-haired so-earnest-it-hurts Raoul last week, I'm now re-thinking later chapters entirely.)
> 
> Tons of new pictures for this chapter! Can't wait to hear what you think. veroniqueclaire*tumblr*com
> 
> (This chapter was revised in March 2014, and the new version owes many thanks to Darcy for fashion expertise.)


	11. Chapter 11

"Five minutes, forty five seconds." Erik spoke quickly, but without any edge of anxiety in his voice. His entire demeanor radiated an authoritative yet unemotional composure, as though he'd switched into a different mode of operating.

"Listen carefully," he continued, "the dark-haired man in the blue Ozwald Boateng suit who is impatiently waiting for the maitre d' downstairs is Vladimir Rezart Vrioni, an Albanian magnate in the weapons industry and the most vindictive human I've ever done unpleasant business with. He appears to be accompanied by two security guards of his own, and another guard for his wife - or possibly just for her necklace. Put your shoes on. There's going to be broken glass."

Heart pounding out of her chest, she reached over and frantically pulled on the uncomfortable heels she'd slipped off earlier, her fingers shaking and clumsy as she threaded the ankle straps through the buckles. Still kneeling at the side of the table, she tried her best to stay low, and looked up at him for further instruction.

"Without raising your head above the level where it is now, reach over to the empty table behind you and pass me the steak knives." Wordlessly, she followed his command, handing the two heavy, gleamingly sharp knives over to him, handles first. Fear began rising in her chest, and a high pitched ringing in her ears began to drown out the sounds of the restaurant around her.

"Now," he continued, "Slide your jacket off your chair and put it on, and pick up your purse." She complied - thinking back to the warning he'd given, days ago, about never using the coat check lest one needed to leave in a hurry - before he went on, "When I'm done speaking, move several tables away from me before standing, then walk across the room and take a seat at the bar, facing the stairway. When the violence begins and the crowd scatters, head downstairs with the rest of the bystanders and walk out without looking back. I"ll catch up when the threat here is eliminated."

"What?" she whispered, jerking her head up to look at him. "I"m not leaving you."

"Three and a half minutes," he said sharply. "Vrioni is vicious and I double-crossed him. His guards appear to be ex-military, and this is going to go badly for all parties involved. I need you safely away from it. Now."

"I don't want you to kill anyone!" she said in a frantic whisper.

"You've chosen a poor moment for joking," came his curt reply, his eyes darting around the room. "Two minutes, forty five seconds."

"Please!" she whispered. "You can do it without killing them..."

"God _dammit_ , Christine" he hissed - emotion finally breaking through curt, tactical tone of voice he'd been using, and his eyes, glaring and furious, meeting hers, "Don't trust me to protect you and then dictate the terms!" The beige latex mask he wore in public did even less to conceal his emotions than the white sculpted one he wore when they were alone, and the sudden onslaught of his anger was paralysing.

The moment seemed to thicken and slow, as she choked down a sob and tried to silence it, tried to will her trembling legs to move, aware that at any moment the other patrons in the restaurant would likely notice her kneeling on the floor, aware that any moment the man who was Erik's enemy would be walking up the stairs to be shown to his table and inevitable confrontation - and yet her body felt numb, its movements impossibly delayed.

She shot Erik a final pleading look, unsure whether she was still begging him to get through this situation without adding more murders to his name - or just for his help, because she wasn't sure she'd be able to get away from their table and safely over to the bar in time to let his plan proceed - but his eyes narrowed, and he looked over his right shoulder past the edge of the mezzanine, and then his glance seemed to rapidly dart around the room. Following his gaze, she turned to take in the staircase to the ground floor behind her, the restaurant's bar counter to her right, the brushed steel planter boxes surrounding the edge of the mezzanine level, and over the edge to her left, the beams of the massive lighting truss hanging at the level of the mezzanine, suspended over the rest of the ground floor.

He looked back down at her, and steely eyes met hers, before he squared his jaw and spat out, " _Fine_. No death. But - _serious_ injuries. _Grave, incapacitating_ , injuries. Give me the leeway I need to get us out of here."

She nodded, relief washing over her.

"New plan," he said sharply. "No knives involved. Go sit at that damned empty table at the far end of the balcony. When I say 'now', follow me. There is no more time for questions. Give me the pen out of your purse and go."

Adrenaline flooded her body and she followed his orders, able to move once again, handing over the pen and crawling until she was well away from where they'd been sitting, then standing up, ignoring the startled glances of the family dining nearby, and stiffly walking across the room, to sit at the lone unoccupied table along the mezzanine's edge.

Her hands were trembling, and her entire body felt taut with dread. The murmur of dozens of unaware restaurant patrons and the clink of forks and knives against fine china were too ordinary, to reassuring, and she found herself almost irritated at the other people who were peacefully eating their dinners without the threat of terror she felt. Her eyes leapt back and forth between the staircase where this Vrioni would be coming into sight and the table where Erik still sat, scribbling something furiously on a cloth napkin. He reached inside his jacket pocket and withdrew a cell phone, then wrapped it in the napkin and tied the ends to form a bundle. She had just begun to wonder what he possibly could have written, when he abruptly turned his head to the right and picked up his hat from the chair beside him, a gesture she knew by now meant he was trying to obscure the masked side of his face, trying to blend in, which meant -

At the doorway, a brunette woman in her forties - tall, thin, and wearing a long-sleeved cream jersey dress and the massive diamond jewelry Erik had mentioned - was striding into the room in obvious irritation, with a young man with a blond buzz cut trailing behind her; his black blazer, cargo pants, and bluetooth earpiece standing out in the room full of suits and ties. Raised voices echoed from the stairwell and seconds later an equally tall man in a rather ostentatious blue suit entered the room, obviously in the middle of berating the maitre d' for some offense, followed by two more guards also wearing earpieces.

The woman - Vrioni's wife? - seemed to choose a table that suited her and sat, crossing her arms and looking away from her husband's argument, as her guard retreated to the corner of the mezzanine opposite the entrance. With a crisp and calculated calmness that spoke to deeply-held manners and no hurry, Erik folded his own napkin, and stood, refastening the lower button of his suit jacket and then pushing his chair in. He crossed the short distance to the table where the woman sat and placed the bundled napkin on the plate before her, leaned over to say something, then kept walking. The blond guard began walking toward Erik, saying something to his back Christine couldn't understand, and -

"You!" Vrioni snarled, a shock of recognition and hatred ringing in his voice, before he pointed at Erik from across the room and gesturing at his guards, who began advancing - just as Erik stopped sharply, and whirled around to his right to grab, with his left hand, the gun from the right hand of the blond guard behind him. The movement was so fluid, Christine could barely tell what had happened, but then the blond man was doubled over and Erik landed several kicks before the man sprawled out on the ground. Erik pinched the front of his fedora and set it on a table.

A dozen gasps filled the restaurant, along with the sound of chairs scooting back, as the restaurant patrons scattered, moving away from the altercation. Erik seemed to take no notice of them, just threw a quick look at the short distance remaining between the two remaining guards advancing, before looking back out over the edge of the balcony, his eyes seemingly focused on the ceiling.

The noise of the gunshot was followed shortly by screams, as Erik fired seemingly at the far corners of the domed roof, and as the restaurant patrons began fleeing. He continued pulling the trigger until the gun clicked empty, then nonchalantly flung it over the edge of the railing, and Christine saw the beams of the lighting fixture start to sway, the cables snapping loose from the bullet-riddled walls, where Erik must have -

Another shot was fired, from the opposite side of the room, and Christine looked to the left where one of Vrioni's men stood, blocking the stairwell, shooting at Erik, as the shorter of the two guards rushed toward him.

...It was like watching him play the violin, or the piano. The confidence and fluidity with which he fought was unsettlingly beautiful, each movement flowing smoothly into the next; he moved with the grace of a dancer and the fatality of a viper. With the restaurant's dull classical music still playing, she found herself mesmerized more than terrified as he landed blow after blow against the guard without losing his methodical calm or even seeming out of breath.

Someone who was capable of doing _that_ , had vowed to always protect her...

Tables toppled, chairs slid, wine glasses hit the floor and shattered, while patrons scattered to huddle in the corners and shriek; Vrioni's wife wailing louder than most and gesturing at her husband from across the room. Christine remained at her table near the mezzanine, suddenly aware of the importance of following his instructions, and quite how badly she must have botched the original plan...

Struggling across the room, Erik pushed the guard into the bar, slamming the man against the wooden counter with one arm and flailing with his free hand, grabbing bottles of liquor and hurling them across the room to shatter in a puddle of alcohol and broken glass near Vrioni - just as sirens began to sound outside. Erik cursed, then abruptly pulled the guard's jacket back, grabbed the gun from the the shoulder holster beneath, and unceremoniously pulled the trigger twice, shooting each of the guard's feet. The man fell to the ground, roaring in pain; Erik dodged another bullet from the remaining guard, then trained the gun on Vrioni, who was still blocking the stairs.

"Vladmir, your manners are deplorable," Erik said, with weary contempt. "You've started a fight you're insufficiently armed to finish, and wrecked a good many people's dinners in the process."

Vrioni growled. "I should have killed you before you got the chance to leave Kosovo with the better part of my bank account, _Ankth_."

"You should have stuck to the terms of our original deal. Even I have _standards_ , and your new customer fell far short," Erik said, in the scathing, dismissive tone of voice he normally reserved for critiquing overrated tenors.

"If we're going to discuss business," Vrioni said coldly, "do you recall how I prefer to handle business associates who stab me in the back. "

"Of that, I am well aware. Frankly, I ought to take you out now and be done with it… but for some reason I _don't... quite... understand_ ," Erik grated out, and she knew it was directed at her, "I... feel inclined to let you live. So, I have a proposal that will allow us to settle this like gentlemen. I'll be in touch."

Holding the gun's aim steady, Erik took two steps to the right, and retrieved up his hat from the nearby table. Settling it atop his head, he lifted the tray of tealight candles from the table's centerpiece. "Now. _Darling_." he said emphatically, and shakily, Christine stood, just as Erik flung the candles toward the puddle of broken liquor bottles. The flames ripped across the surface of the alcohol and up into the soaked tablecloth, and in seconds there was a blaze several feet high - patrons screaming, smoke alarms sounding - but her eyes were trained on Erik, as he vaulted over the edge of the mezzanine and now stood on the edge of the partially fallen lighting fixture, the beams of which formed a shaky ramp, thirty feet long, to the ground floor.

 _Trust him; you have to trust him_ … and she climbed up and over the edge, chaos and fire extinquishers behind her, and Erik ahead of her saying, "quickly, now" - and she felt sheer terror stepping out onto the unsteady beam, swaying slightly from the cables that were still attached. Then he nodded and turned to move quickly down the beams toward the ground level and the entire structure began to swing so precariously that that inching along slowly was impossible, and she ran after him.

Another cable snapped and the left rear side of the fixture crashed to the ground, throwing her to her side and sliding down the remaining distance on her back, her head hitting the beam hard and metal scraping through her jacket - pain clear and bright - the crack of gunshots on both sides and Erik grabbing her hands to pull her up and drag her out the door, stooping to gather up her handbag from where it had fallen, thrusting it back into her grasp.

"Walk, _walk_ ," he was yanking her swiftly forward, his hand clamped on her upper arm, "Until we are around the corner." He pulled his hat low and turned his head toward her and away from the street, and they walked with agonizing slowness for twenty feet, as the sirens sounded louder and as they rounded the corner she could hear police cars screeching to a stop at the building's entrance.

"Now," he said, once they were safely out of sight, "We run."

Running had never been more difficult - high heels on centuries-old pavement, holding her purse tight to her body with her right hand and holding up her dress with her left to keep from tripping on it, her coat flapping behind her. Keeping up with Erik's long strides was impossible, but she flung herself forward, lungs burning, shoulders and back still stinging from the fall, and electrical surges of fear coursing through her body. They ran block after block, the sound of the sirens fading in the distance, until the only noise out of place was their rapid footsteps along the narrow streets winding upwards. A right turn led them to a curved concrete staircase set into the hill; Erik sprinted up it two steps at a time. He stood at the top, surveying the street below and behind her as she caught up, and he nodded, seemingly satisfied.

"Two more blocks," he said. "For this part, we'll take a slower pace. Don't want to appear out of the ordinary."

Still gasping for air, she nodded, and turned to follow him, exhausted by the push and pull of fleeing then needing to appear normal, not even processing what had happened back in the restaurant. It took every bit of willpower she had to listen to his command and to walk at an unhurried pace, to believe that this was safe, that he had a plan, when the flight instinct was overwhelming her mind with the urge to seek safety.

...She had the sudden realization that being with Erik was safer than anywhere she could run to. She was lost in that thought for several seconds of silence before his voice broke in.

"I'd like to put a great deal of distance between us and Vrioni, and to prevent him from following too easily."

Christine nodded, struggling to find her breath. "How?"

"I'm going to steal his helicopter." He said lightly.

"...We're not going back to the house tonight?"

Erik shook his head, and his voice was grave. "We're leaving the country as quickly as possible. I have no idea what Vrioni is doing so far from his base of operations, but I have little interest in meeting any other old associates."

All of the secret rooms and fake passports and clandestine travel she had somehow been able to take in stride, but this - the idea that there was something so dangerous that they would just leave their belongings behind and run with only the clothes on their backs - suddenly made it clear that her life was impossibly different now. The world she was living in might be the same physical one as every other person in this city, but it was an infinitely different experience playing out alongside the millions of lives being lived within the ordinary parameters of society.

"I don't have… I hardly have anything with me, in my purse," she said, suddenly feeling very small. "Everything is back at the house."

"Nothing at the house is irreplaceable, and I have everything we need to leave safely. I have always been prepared for this; every time we have ever left one of the safehouses, there was always the possibility that we wouldn't be going back."

She nodded in what felt like slow motion, starting to understand the magnitude of the operation Erik was carrying out on a day to day basis.

"As for our intended transport," he continued, "Istanbul is about 500 miles from Tirana, which is well within the ferry range of the AgustaWestland 109 Vrioni normally travels in - and likely how he arrived in Istanbul. There are only two heliports within fifty kilometers of the restaurant, and one of them is atop the hotel at the end of this block. The pilot was almost certainly one of his guards, which means the aircraft itself was likely left unattended."

"And you… know how to fly a helicopter?" she kept asking questions, as though they were equals in this situation and she was simply double-checking their odds of survival.

"Not particularly well," Erik admitted dryly. "I've done it a few times, always in a pinch. There are a good many things to keep track of, a few precise movements amidst some overall larger ones… I'd say it's easier than Rachmaninoff, harder than Mozart. Here we are," he gestured, and guided them off the sidewalk and through a revolving door into a grand hotel lobby, with marble steps and pillars and dozens of couples in evening wear milling about, clearly at the hotel for some sort of event.

They made their way through the crowd in the lobby, moving as quickly as one reasonably could, and she was relieved when the elevator arrived and it was empty. Erik pressed the button for the fourteenth floor.

"Do you know where we're going?" she asked, wondering if there was anywhere on Earth he hadn't already been.

He shook his head almost imperceptibly, and continued staring forward. "I know we're headed in the proper direction. There may be a flight or two of stairs at the end; elevators rarely go all the way to the roof."

Even while admitting he didn't know, Erik was still projecting some sense of unflappable hypercompetence. It would be so easy to just sit back and be a passenger, to follow blindly - but she couldn't help but try and fill in some of the details, so she could understand what was going on here, and not be completely in the dark… or completely useless.

"What was in that note you wrote on the napkin?"

"I informed _Zonjë_ Vrioni that a botched transaction and a good deal of bilateral animosity had left her husband and I on a path of mutually assured destruction which had already cost his company several million dollars and taken the lives of a half-dozen members of his previous security team. My regrettably brief letter told her that if she wanted to end the death spiral, she would ensure her husband answered that mobile when it rang…" Erik grimaced, and shook his head before continuing. "It's a high risk plan. Instead of walking away from a tidy crime scene, we are running with a very shaky bargain in play."

He turned to look at her. "You and I will discuss the meanings of 'trust' and 'life and death situation' later."

She winced. There was no noise but the chime of the elevator passing floors for a few seconds, and Christine couldn't bear the cool weight of the disappointment and frustration in the eyes locked on hers another second. "...What's the bargain?" she asked softly.

"Some money - and some information to make him take the money seriously. And to answer your next question: no. Vrioni would have been better armed and without familial liabilities if he'd actually been seeking me out. Everything about this situation indicates that running into him was a ghastly coincidence."

The elevator beeped again and the doors opened to reveal not the empty hallway she'd hoped for - but rather a ballroom, crowded with guests in black tie attire, and the notes of a waltz came from the orchestra... in the corner of the dance floor, where dancers swirled about in some sort of organized ballroom dance.

Erik's voice rumbled lower and more biting in fatal irritation than she had possibly ever heard, as he uttered, simply: "Hell."

**XXXXXXXXXXXX**

Several long moments passed as he surveyed the room, and she turned to face him, so that anyone seeing them might think they were just two guests chatting at the party. Her hands were still shaking, even as she tried to hold them against her chest, but before she could think much further, Erik seemed to recover his composure and was bending to speak.

"It would be very nice," he whispered at the top of her ear, "If we could get across that horrifically inconvenient dance floor to the stairwell at the opposite side of the ballroom without making too much of a stir. Take off your jacket and leave it on a chair. Keep the purse. We'll blend well enough."

She dropped the coat, absently feeling the skin on her back burn at the fabric moving across it, knowing it was the least of their problems, and then stepping forward as he gestured. It was almost elegant, the way Erik moved through the crowd, his right elbow slicing through at eye level of the party guests and his left arm wrapped around the space she occupied without actually touching her. It was like being pulled behind him in a bubble, as he stepped and shouldered through the oblivious throng of people.

Erik turned from the slow progress they were making toward the glowing green exit sign marking the stairwell at the opposite side of the ballroom, and looked over his shoulder and said something, then his eyes looked over her head, seemingly surveying the path through the crowd behind them. A moment passed, before he looked down at her and repeated: "All that ballet - can you dance? Could you follow a Viennese Waltz - the fast one?"

"I... um…" Christine stuttered, blinking and looking down to narrowly avoid stepping on the train of a woman's dress and putting the strap of the purse over her shoulder so she could hold her own skirt up. They reached the periphery of the crowd, as it drew thicker with spectators watching the dancers. She took a deep breath. "Yes. I think. Can you lead?"

They were at the edge, and he halted progress altogether and turned, gestured at the dance floor, pulling her in and then snapping into the waltz position, his right hand on her waist and his left hand holding her right. He raised his visible eyebrow and halfway smiled, then said, "It's never come up."

And then they were swirling, rapidly, the room spinning around her - _one-two-three, one-two-three,_ trying to repeat the steps in her head, trying not to miss one and trip - but the only thing she could really think about was feeling the tension in the arms around her. Erik's posture was so rigidly formal that from a distance he must have looked perfect and precise, a textbook dancer - yet touch betrayed him. He was holding his muscles so taut that they nearly shook, and more so than anything she had witnessed back at the restaurant, she was overwhelmed by the sudden understanding of the power contained in the man who was currently leading her around the dance floor, so close their ribs nearly pressed together at each turn. Erik was capable of _anything_ , and here he was, holding her like a Fabergé egg.

They were moving along with the other dancers, progressing counter clockwise around the room, halfway to the exit; they would probably be running again soon, once they were out of sight of all of these people. This might be the last chance she had to say anything non-tactical for a while.

"I'm sorry," Christine began carefully, "About… earlier. I was just so scared." Her eyes looked up to Erik but he was looking straight over her head, eyes rapidly darting around them room - probably looking to see if they'd been followed, ignoring her completely. Disappointment was a strange thing to feel amidst fight and flight and fear - yet it wafted over her, and her gaze trailed down, embarrassed.

 _One-two-three, one-two-three_ \- another turn, and she wondered if Erik had even heard her. Her eyes fell upon her own hand on his shoulder - _his_ \- and for a moment she thought, _this is what it is like to be held by him_. The wiry muscle of his arm was like marble beneath her hand, and she squeezed, wondering if that would get his attention at last, watching her own thumb stroke back and forth across the smooth black fabric of his tuxedo jacket.

His chin dropped and his eyes fell down to meet hers, pupils enormous and black, as he searched her face. She wondered what he found - because he seemed to relax, ever so slightly, before returning his gaze to the horizon behind her. "Not now," he commanded quietly, then his expression seemed to soften. "Three more turns and we'll be at the exit. You're doing fine."

It was the tiniest movement; his right hand was still pressed firmly against the middle of her back, in the proper ballroom dancing position, and his thumb stroked twice, reassuringly, against her skin above the dress, mimicking her own gesture.

...When had he ever been comfortable enough to touch her as a way of giving reassurance? It was as though the situation of emergency transformed him; the confidence he had in dispatching enemies and handling perilous situations temporarily extending to how he interacted with her. _This_ was an Erik who was unafraid to touch her, who spoke to her without tirades of self loathing about his face or outbursts of anger about Raoul. This was just the two of them, together, surviving this thing; old fights and hurt feelings seemed so immaterial by comparison. _Us against the world, she thought_ — and then shivered at the magnitude of that idea. _Us_ …

"You're bleeding," Erik murmured, glancing down over her shoulder. "Not much, but your back is rather scraped up. We'll have to deal with that once we get to a secure location."

That explained the pain. If she focused on it directly, she could tell that it hurt, and would probably hurt quite a bit later — but right now the surge of adrenaline was keeping her focus forward. He spun her outward, under his arm and off the edge of the dance floor and she began moving as quickly as possible toward the exit sign, leading him, for once.

The door to the stairwell had no signs on it besides the universal green exit symbol of a figure going through a door, and so she could only hope that no alarm would sound as she pushed the metal bar and exited the ballroom into a stairway. To her left, the spiral bannisters wound down the stairwell for a dozen or more levels, and her head swam for a moment at the staggering height - but to her right were the stairs up, and she took a deep breath and went up them as fast as she could, with Erik following closely behind.

One flight up and then the stairs ended directly into the door. This one did have all kinds of red signs in Turkish probably cautioning them against exiting, and she looked back over her shoulder for confirmation. Erik nodded, and she pushed tentatively. No alarm sounded, but who knew what silent alert was being sent to the hotel security department… shaking it off, she opened the door entirely and the stepped out onto the hotel's roof. The skyline of Istanbul was breathtaking; the last breath of daylight after sunset illuminating the clouds, and the domes and spires of the mosques glowing golden as their lights came on.

The rooftop itself was empty, along with the helipad, and her heart sank as she heard a distinctive, repetitive thud sounding in the air. She turned, to spot a glossy white helicopter receding in the distance. _They were too late..._

The cry of rage Erik let out was so sharp it seemed to pierce her breastbone and translate his fear and anger directly to her - and she suddenly understood his terror at the situation slipping dangerously and completely out of his control.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Thank you so much for the reviews - the reviews and the wonderful phan community on Tumblr are the thing that motivates me to write the next chapter. It's an interesting challenge to keep the characters in character, particularly as this story goes more into full-on Bond movie territory - I'd love to hear how I'm doing on that front. :-)**
> 
> **As always, more author's notes and reference images at veroniqueclaire*tumblr*com**


	12. Chapter 12

Erik sprinted across the empty helipad to the opposite side of the building's roof and grabbed onto the fire escape ladder at the edge and shook it, as if testing for stability.

"It goes to a balcony, probably outside the ballroom; but there's not another ladder from there. We'll probably need to break in from the balcony, and get back to the lobby via the service elevator, if there is one. I don't like the odds..." he called out with a distractedness that suggested he was evaluating dozens of different options at once.

"We can just take the stairs back down…" she proposed hesitantly, catching up to him.

"You're not grasping the magnitude of our predicament," Erik's eyes were darting around, surveying the nearby rooftops, and she hoped he wasn't contemplating a jump. "If Vrioni called ahead to his helicopter pilot, that means he anticipated my coming here. That means, at any moment, whichever of his guards are still walking and whichever others he can summon on short notice will be enroute. We need to get out of this building and out of the line of fire as quickly as possible."

"There were three guns," she recalled, trying to remember the blur of fighting at the restaurant in precise details, "One you emptied, one you took from the guard, and one that the last guard was holding…"

"Don't waste time counting. There are _always_ more guns." He strode to look over the other corner of the building. "Too far a drop on this side, we'll have to -"

The door from the stairwell flew open and the two remaining guards ran out onto the rooftop. Before the gasp could escape from her throat, Erik lunged forward and a flash of red flew out from under his coat - and suddenly the taller of the two men was clasping his neck against what looked like a noose, rapidly tightening of its own volition. That man fell to his knees yanking at the rope, just as the other charged at Erik, weapon drawn, and the scuffle that ensued had Christine standing terrified on the sideline, horrified and useless and looking about for something she might try and hit the guard with.

The fists and knees were moving too quickly for her to tell who had the upper hand, but the sounds were shocking; the sudden noises of brutality shattered the quiet rumblings of the city in the evening. Violence on television was nothing like this - the sharp crack of bone and cry of agony as Erik slammed the man's wrist into the low wall, and the scrape of metal against brick as he withdrew the gun from the guard's hand; the rasp of leather shoe soles scratching and sliding on the pavement of the roof, punctuated by the heavy thuds and sickening crunches as they each landed blows against one another.

There was a awkward thump as the guard hit the pavement and lay there, groaning - and Erik took that moment to stride toward her decisively, his coat swinging to the side as he walked with great purpose, methodically untying the bow tie at his neck. Halfway between Erik and where she stood, the first man struggled to his feet, gasping for air, the red noose still tight around his neck - and without pausing in step or even looking at the assailant, Erik shot his arm out straight and emotionlessly pushed the guard off the edge of the roof to the balcony one level below.

His eyes stayed locked on hers, and he closed the remaining distance in seconds. Behind him, she could see the second guard moving to rise again - but Erik didn't seem to notice or care. " _Take this_ ," he commanded, pressing the gun into her hand and using his other hand to wrap her hands around it, the barrel pointed down. "This is how you take the safety off. Put it in your purse. If you need to use it, pretend you know how. You're an actress; act confident." He spoke quickly, calmly and resolutely. She tried to glance over his shoulder, worried the guard would be getting up any moment now.

" _Look at me._ " He took her face in his hands and physically turned her gaze back to him. "I need you to listen. There are thirty thousand Euro and two passports sewn into the lining of your handbag. Your earrings are worth at least another six thousand. Take the stairs to the ground floor, take a taxi to Sirkeci station, buy a ticket on the very next train that's leaving tonight. Stay on that train until I find you. If it reaches the terminus, wherever that is, book a room at the best hotel near the station using the Swiss passport."

She started to speak, needed to know how he would -

"I'm not _asking_ ," he said firmly. "Go now. I will find you. I promise." His hands remained on either side of her face, and she could feel his thumbs pressing against her cheekbones; his fingers cupped around under her chin. Erik pulled her closer for a second and his face loomed over hers, an unreadable expression burning in his eyes. In that second, she wondered if he meant to kiss her, and her own pulse roared in her ears - but Erik just swallowed hard, and whispered: "Trust me. _Run_."

**XXXXXXXXXXXX**

Down eight levels of stairs, ten, twelve — running as fast as she could, holding her shoes in one hand and the railing in the other, an infinity of spiraling down. Her heart was beating so forcefully that it felt like it was punching against the inside of her chest, and everything was so intense that the command to run was the only thing she could focus on.

The stairwell as as plain as the hotel had been opulent; fluorescent lights and pale grey walls. The signs at each landing with the floor level were the only thing that differed as she pounded down the flights of stairs — even if she couldn't read the rest of the sign in Turkish, each placard thankfully had a large Arabic numeral at its center — and finally the sign read "0" and she emerged into the lobby, on the opposite side from the elevators they'd originally taken, which means the doorway was… to her right.

 _Walk, walk now_ … she reminded herself, remembering Erik's earlier advice to blend in. A frantic and disheveled woman in an evening gown was conspicuous even here, where everyone was dressed for the formal event in the ballroom upstairs — how would she blend in at the train station?

Christine kept her eyes trained on doors of the hotel lobby, and without conscious thought, she reached out and plucked a scarf off the coat stand outside the hotel's restaurant. Wrapping it around her hair, under her chin, and laying the long ends over her shoulders, she knew she should be shocked at herself for stealing — and yet at the moment, changing her appearance and getting safely to the train station seemed more important than petty theft. She could see the taxi stand outside the lobby doors, a line of cabs with a uniformed bellman helping guests into the cars. Just 50 feet and she'd be there, safely in a taxi, while Erik was still upstairs in danger...

She couldn't think about Erik; she couldn't think about anything. She had to just keep moving forward, escape, survive, follow his instructions. It was almost like watching herself walk through the heavy glass door, down the carpeted front steps, over to the row of taxis, feigning a smile at the bellman opening the door of the car for her. Christine croaked out the name of the train station to the indifferent driver and he started the car.

Her heartbeat began to slow, and the singular focus of the command run began to dissipate; the strange state of operating on autopilot wearing off, and her own consciousness gradually returning. Each thud of her heart felt like a wave crashing on the shore, slow and forceful with enormous momentum behind it and blocking out all other sounds. _Beat_.

She had left Erik alone on the rooftop, fighting against an unknown number of assailants.

 _Beat_.

She was alone. She might be followed by Vrioni or his men.

 _Beat_.

She was alone, and had to keep running without Erik.

 _Beat_.

She had to keep running, because Raoul's plan to trap Erik had left her a wanted woman on the wrong side of the law.

 _Beat_.

"Trust me. Run." Erik had been so close he could have kissed her, and in that moment she felt -

Everything Christine had been desperately avoiding confronting came crashing down in her head like a tidal wave.

Every feeling she had buried in the last few weeks in the name of simply surviving another day came bursting to the forefront of her consciousness, pouring in at massive pressure, like water through the windows of a car submerged underwater. Her head and heart swam from the onslaught of emotion, visceral and overwhelming and she didn't know whether to sob or scream at the top of her lungs.

Her life was _gone_ , and this harrowing new world of violence and fleeing was terrifying without Erik's reassuring presence. She was furious at Raoul and she simultaneously _missed_ him, missed the easy life of brunch and cuddling and someone telling her it would all be ok. Raoul had blundered into getting her implicated alongside Erik and had likely ruined her singing career forever - and she didn't even feel comfortable feeling angry with him because she felt… guilty. Oh, god, that was this feeling. Betrayal and guilt because all of this — this series of escapades and escapes, the days of music and seeing the world and this entire secret parallel life - was enthralling. Erik was enthralling. He was impossible, and he was frightening, and he was brilliant and wicked and passionate and _hers_ , if only she'd have him.

It was all too much.

What kind of person was she? Raoul was wonderful; everything he had done wrong, he had done in trying to save her, because he _loved_ her. And she loved him - loved his sweetness, his supportiveness, his confidence and his kindness. Raoul was a good man and she felt like the worst woman on earth for even contemplating a life besides the one they were supposed to have together. The choice was so obvious - a happy, healthy, comfortable love - and it seemed like she must be a broken human being for wondering if she wanted something different. She was betraying him with every thought, betraying a man who was truly, genuinely, kind... And yet - her life with Raoul seemed so distant; back in the mirror world where she lived in the same existence with everyone else, the old Christine who always did the right thing, the safe thing.

She dropped her head in her hands and felt the dire ache of guilt flood her body. There was a United States embassy in Istanbul, surely; she should tell the taxi driver to change the route, take her there. Tell a story, call herself an escaped hostage, and whatever the circumstances and charges were against her, Raoul would make it ok. His family had the kind of political power to make this all go away. She could go _home_ , back to New York, back to her life…

The taxi drove on, across a bridge, and the lights of boats glimmered on the water, bright yellow against the hazy purple sky as the sunset slipped into evening. She looked back over her shoulder at the buildings scattered across the hills of Beyoğlu, trying to make out the silhouette of the hotel's tower, trying to see if the helicopter had circled back around to the roof, hoping with a desperate anxiety that Erik was safe...

Christine didn't want to go home.

**XXXXXXXX**

By the time the taxi was pulling into the circle at the train station, she had broken the mirror in her makeup compact with the heel of her shoe, and used one of the shards to slice through the lining of her purse, furtively checking every second to make sure the driver wasn't looking back at her. For three weeks, she had been a passenger riding passively on Erik's well-planned itinerary, and for five weeks before that she had been a pawn in everyone's plans; there was no one to tell her what the right thing to do was now and it felt like she was awake after months of sleepwalking.

Christine counted out a few hundred Euro and withdrew the Swiss passport from the space between the lining and the leather exterior of the handbag, and then left the rest concealed behind the lining. She had almost nothing useful in the purse: a lipstick, a few hairpins, some lozenges, the small wallet she had learned to carry with a day's worth of pocket money in the local currency, the pair of sunglasses Erik had advised that she always keep in her purse, even at night, and now she understood why. It was too dark to wear them now without seeming odd, but they'd come in handy tomorrow.

Christine wondered where she'd be tomorrow. Time to find out.

The gun lay in the bottom of the purse, sinister and intimidating - and she pulled the leather straps of the bag closed, twisted the clasp and prayed she'd never have to touch it.

Paying the driver in the few Turkish Lira she had left, she set out to find a currency exchange in the station. The exchange rate seemed painfully high, but she had more money than time, and five minutes later she was walking away with what surely would be enough Lira for a train ticket.

The next train departing was bound for Belgrade in 17 minutes. The train departing 8 minutes after that had a name she knew from storybooks, and its destination was Venice, where she could speak at least a few words of the language - nevermind that she'd learned them from singing Verdi. An hour after that and there was a train to Paris.

" _The very next train_ ," Erik had said - and knowing him, he would precisely calculate how long it would have taken her to reach the station, once he was free to follow. Christine took a deep breath, and hoped Erik didn't have any old business associates in Belgrade, and bought one ticket for the Balkan Express.

Even with the stolen scarf wrapped around her hair and shoulders in a halfhazard approximation of the way some of the women in Istanbul wore headscarves, she still felt vulnerably conspicuous walking through the train station in an evening gown with no luggage, alone in a largely empty train station. Announcements and advertisements played over the loudspeaker, and she was grateful for the noise, lest the only sound be the clicking of her pumps on the concrete floor. She could feel eyes on her as she made her way toward the platform for her train, and anxiety began to creep up her spine as she wondered if they were just fellow passengers curious about her unusual attire, or some of Vrioni's men, sent to the train station to block all egress points from Istanbul.

Christine made eye contact with a man wearing a bluetooth earpiece, and her stomach plummeted in fear.

He glanced away as quickly as she did, looking back to the phone in his hand; she summoned the courage to keep walking toward the train, her thoughts racing ahead. This was probably nothing. He hadn't been one of the guards at the restaurant. Lots of people had earpieces for their phones, it was a common thing, _nothing to worry about_. He was wearing jeans and a bulky green sweater, not the black blazer worn by the other guards - although the green sweater looked vaguely military, this could be an off-duty uniform.

She walked faster, and forced herself to keep looking straight ahead, keeping her eye on the sign for her train ahead. There was nothing else she could do.

Her coach was the third in the train, and the seating was in a series of small compartments, each compartment seating with three seats on a side facing one another, and each cabin having a door that opened out onto a common hallway running down the left side of the carriage. The seats were a garish green upholstery, but at least most of them were empty and she was relieved to see none of the seats were occupied when she reached the compartment that corresponded with her ticket number. No one else would probably board this close to departure; at least she would have some privacy. Christine shut the door and fell into the chair, and took several deep breaths, trying not to come apart.

A knock at the entry made her startle, but the voice that followed in Turkish sounded so bored and routine that Christine realized surely this was just the conductor walking along and checking for tickets, and she opened the door with hands that only trembled slightly, to find she was correct. The man repeated the same phrase and she realized she was clutching the paper envelope containing the ticket to her chest with her left hand; trying desperately to relax, she handed the ticket over for him to punch. He nodded, and walked down the hallway, knocking on the door of the next compartment.

She closed the door of the compartment again and wished desperately that it had a lock of some sort, then paced across the small space to examine the window. If she put her face very close to the glass, she could almost see the proper angle out the window to look backwards into the station, where the man with the earpiece had been standing… he had moved a few feet over and was smoking a cigarette in clear defiance of the signs forbidding it. _He's just a guy with a phone waiting for a train_ , she tried to tell herself, again and again; his gaze flicked upward toward the train she was on, and Christine's sense of nausea grew.

The fabric covering the seat was scratchy as she sat down on it and drew her legs up, wrapping her arms around her shins and resting her forehead on her knees. Christine could feel the shredded hem of her evening gown, and had a fleeting thought that the poor dress had been through so much - before choking down something between a laugh and a sob when she realized she had been through the same. Erik had been through so much worse - she thought of his thin, bloodied knuckles, as he had taken her face into his hands - and he was still out there, probably still fighting an onset of old enemies, and she wished, in a rush, that she had just let him do whatever he had been planning to kill Vrioni and escape cleanly - and then she felt sick for thinking it. But if she had, he wouldn't have had to send her away, and he would be here now, instead of fighting on a rooftop with his life in danger.

Her arms and chest were shaking as she fought to keep from crying. _Stay strong, stay alert_ , she told herself, but her thoughts were spiraling so rapidly, every worst-case scenario playing out in horrific detail in her mind. What did Vrioni do to enemies that Erik was so afraid to have her near? What if Erik couldn't catch up to her for days or weeks? What if something happened to Erik, period?

_This is what it feels like to lose him._

Her heart twisted, and tears threatened again in her eyes, and she stood up and walked to the window, shaking her head, trying to find her strength and slow her breathing. If ever a situation had called for a level head…

The man with the bluetooth earpiece was gone. She pressed her cheek against the glass, craning her neck to scan the station, but he wasn't within sight. No trains had left and the next one wasn't boarding yet, meaning he had either left the station entirely, or boarded the train she was on. Being trapped on a train suddenly felt dangerous; not enough exits, not enough options, and it was taking every bit of resolve she had to remain calm and not slip into a full on panic.

Three sharp raps came at the door, and her heart began beating even faster, if such a thing was possible. Seconds went by, and the conductor's voice did not follow as it had before. Again, someone knocked on the door, so curt and sharp that the door itself shook - and the surge of terror and adrenaline narrowed her vision such that all she could see was her hands on the silver clasp of the purse, twisting it to pull the bag open and sliding her fingers in until they made contact with the cool metal of the gun. Swallowing slowly, she pulled it out, slid back the catch for the safety as Erik had shown her, and looked down at the potential for someone's death in her hands. She took several deep breaths, and pushed down a swell of nausea. _Act the part and you'll never have to pull the trigger._

"Yes?" Christine uttered through gritted teeth, with as much confidence as she could muster, squaring her shoulders and pointing the weapon at the cabin's door, but not moving to open it. She pulled the hammer back to cock the gun, and the distinctive clink of metal on metal rang ominously.

"Smart girl." Erik's voice from the other side of the door was rough and tired, but distinctly pleased.

Her cry of shock must have been audible, because he slid the door back abruptly, and _oh_ it was him, and he was there - battered and bruised and alive.

"Erik!" she choked out, some visceral sensation stronger than just relief rising up in her chest, and the emotional whiplash of swinging from terror to happiness left her reeling. Her arm fell limply to her side and he walked into the compartment to gently remove the gun from her hand, un-cock the hammer and slip it into his pocket. He tilted his head to gesture that they were leaving, and turned to go - but her feet were rooted in place and she struggled to process the deluge of her own emotions.

She couldn't find the words, and she was lost, and conscious thought wasn't in control any longer. Christine wanted - she _needed_ \- something and she didn't even know what it was, but a sense of desperation overcame her, staring at Erik's back as he took a step to leave. Before she knew what she was doing, she had closed the short distance between them and wrapped her arms around his chest from behind, pressing her face against his back as she finally gave in and burst into tears. Erik gasped, and his body went stiff; she kept trying to say something, to explain, but she was choking on sobs, on every bit of trauma and terror from the last few hours washing over her, her chest heaving with each new rush of tears. He didn't move, didn't speak, and eventually she steadied herself enough to say, with her cheek pressed against the hard ridge of his spine and her voice thick and weepy, "You found me, you _found_ me."

"I will _always_ find you," Erik rasped, raw with emotion.

For the first time, it didn't sound like a threat.

**XXXXXXXXX**

A minute passed, and then another, and eventually, drawing shuddering breaths, Erik leaned forward and steadied himself with one arm against the door frame. She could feel his ribcage shake, surrounded by her arms, but it felt like clinging to him in this moment was the only thing keeping her legs from collapsing out from underneath her. It was all so much to go through - to feel - to try and understand. She felt his arm move as his other hand come up, unsure and slow, to hover over her own on his chest, but after a few seconds he dropped it, without ever making contact.

"We... need to get on a different train," Erik said raggedly, pulling away. He turned, and took an awkward step back to regard her with eyes that were wet in the corners, with an expression that was helpless and apprehensive at once. Shakily, he passed a hand over his brow, pressing at the corners of the mask, then drew several deep breaths and removed his tuxedo jacket. He passed it over toward her, but she was momentarily preoccupied by the rumpled disarray of his white shirt - scuffed with dirt and splashes of blood she hoped wasn't his.

"Here," he walked over and held the dinner jacket for her to put on, his hands still trembling. "There's a train several platforms over that will be safer and... considerably more comfortable. We just have to get off this train before it leaves."

Bewildered, she nodded, slipped her arms into the jacket and followed him with lead feet stumbling, nearly tripping on the bedraggled hem of her gown. The back of his jacket was damp with her tears, and her head was hazy and off-balance.

Relief. She had felt relief, to see him, and holding him in her arms had felt -

"It won't be long now," he turned to the left and gestured that she should go ahead of him down the stairs, out of the train car and onto the platform. A uniformed conductor barked some kind of warning and Erik replied nonchalantly in Turkish, before moving to wrap his arm behind her, hovering just above the small of her back, featherweight brushes of pressure guiding her movements. "I told him we'd... forgotten our luggage in the taxi," Erik whispered, his voice still dry and shaken, as the train began to pull away and they walked in the opposite direction.

It almost felt like floating now, walking through the station in the cathartic afterglow of crying her eyes out. Erik was here. He was safe. They would be safe. If the man from earlier was a problem, Erik would deal with it. Scanning the station, she spotted the shifty figure with the headset again - pacing near the ticket booths. Wordlessly, and with much effort she raised her hand to gesture at him, and Erik squinted his eyes for a moment, then said distractedly, "Garden-variety drug dealer. Irrelevant, thankfully."

She had never felt safer in her life.

The calmness flowed through her veins and Erik's tuxedo jacket surrounded her in warmth, even as Erik himself seemed to be glancing down at her with growing concern. Past several rows of empty tracks and a train that wasn't leaving until morning and they reached another train, considerably older, but beautiful - all hardwood and brass, where the previous train had been plastic and aluminum.

Still leading, still wrapped around her protectively while hardly touching beyond the faintest taps at her elbow, Erik guided them to the first car and produced two tickets to show to yet another conductor assisting passengers with boarding. He pulled down his hat as he spoke to the conductor, and ducked his chin into his collar, and sympathy surged in her chest. A plushly carpeted hallway led to a row of wooden doors, and Erik opened the fifth to reveal a small cabin; lacquered cherrywood walls and a rich burgundy velvet train seat for two persons. A tiny restroom with a marble countertop and a fluffy white bed were visible through the door to the second room.

Christine dropped her purse on the floor, fell onto the seat and then yelped as the sore back of her head hit the cushion. Reaching up, she could feel a tender spot at the base of her skull. She leaned forward to rest her elbows on her knees and her head in her hands, drained. It could have been so much worse. Everything was going to be fine. She tilted her head forward and a sigh, light and strange, escaped.

From the corner of her eye she could see Erik look at her, alarmed. He slammed the lock shut on the door, tossed his hat on the side table, and dropped to crouch before her.

"Christine," he attempted a weak, worried smile, and she realized he was trying to be reassuring. "Do you remember how you got here?"

"What?" she asked dazedly, halfway smiling in confusion, at the silliness of his question.

His eyes roamed her face cautiously, and she couldn't tell if Erik was drinking her in or examining her.

"...Do you feel faint?" he asked softly.

"I feel… I'm really tired. A little… out of it, I guess." She closed her eyes, fumbling for words, before opening them again to say, "It's all so much… nothing feels real."

Erik's lips pursed into a grim line as he nodded, slowly, clearly trying to exert rigid control over the expressions on the exposed portion of his face. "My backup mobile phone is in the inner pocket of that jacket. Can you give it to me?"

She leaned her head into her left hand and reached into the jacket pocket with her right, halfway registering several other objects before finding the phone, and looked up to find his eyes trained on her, round with worry, as she handed it over.

The corners of his mouth turned up in a wince as he said, "Look straight ahead, please." The beam of light from the phone's camera flash was startling as he raised it to her left eye, then slid it across to shine it in her right eye as well.

"Why… what are you doing?" she asked, shaking her head, trying to make sense of this strange moment amidst the last two hours.

"Glasgow Coma Scale," Erik said hoarsely, helplessly. "You hit your head when the lighting beam cable snapped. You're exhibiting symptoms of disorientation. If you have a concussion, or worse…"

He looked away from her, his hands balled into fists and his brow furrowed, and she could see the physical changes in his posture as fear and despair became anger, before he even turned back to her and resumed speaking, snapping now. "None of this would have happened if I had handled the situation as planned. Do you have any idea of how dangerous it was?" Agitated, upset, and obviously containing his temper by only a tenuous thread, he raised the heels of his hands to his forehead and drew several long shaky breaths.

"Erik…" she began.

"Are you having any double vision?" he asked in a flat tone, his head still in his hands.

"No, really, I think I'm…"

"Can you whistle?" His eyes met hers. He looked exhausted.

All she wanted to do was to withdraw from reality and sleep until the day's trauma was a distant memory, but the empathy she was feeling for Erik - the ability, somehow at last, to start to understand his reactions - cut through the fog of detachment. Christine licked her lips, and his eyes followed the gesture with an expression that almost looked pained. She whistled a few measures of Jag Vet en Dejlig Rosa, and saw his shoulders slowly relax and lower from their hunched position. She wondered if he remembered playing it on the violin to calm her, when she had first feared she was losing her mind last year, as a glorious voice had come from nowhere in the rehearsal room.

"Your hearing?" he asked numbly, and it was clear now that he was anchoring himself in some pre-defined medical checklist, when the rest of his emotions were raging in opposite directions. Anger at her, and fear of losing her, and she could only guess what other extremes he was feeling at the loss of control of their circumstances.

"My hearing is normal," she said gently, with as much kindness as she could put in her voice. "I think I'm just a little… overwhelmed. A lot of things happened really fast."

The whistle sounded and the train lurched forward to leave the station, and Christine felt a bit of anxiety fade. Safely on the move again.

"If you would… put your hands in mine. Please," Erik whispered slowly, with evident nervousness that she would refuse. She nodded encouragingly and put her fingertips into his upturned palms, bloodied and bruised though they were. He glanced down at their joined hands and his eyelids fluttered shut, for the briefest of seconds, before he went on. "I want you to squeeze my fingertips with yours. Try to use the same amount of pressure in both hands."

She complied, pressing his fingertips between her fingers and thumbs, and tension seemed to drain out of his body in evident relief. Today she had touched him on more occasions than in the previous year combined, and it was suddenly easier than ever… Curling her fingers inward, she pulled his cool hands toward her, to grasp them in each of her palms, and tried to meet the eyes staring at her in bewilderment with compassion in her own, as she replied, "It's just a bump on the head. I'm going to be fine."

Erik sank back onto his heels, dropping her grip with some reluctance, and running a trembling hand over his dark, unmussed hair that she was now quite sure was a wig. He repeated the gesture and this time his hand remained curled around the back of his neck as he drew several breaths, before eventually seeming to gather himself and speak with relative formality. "No signs of neurological damage. You're likely experiencing the end of an acute stress reaction. That would be consistent with -" He closed his eyes, and shook his head as if to clear it, blinking them open again, and she wondered what he was remembering.

"I need to… do a sweep of the train. Make sure we weren't followed," he said abruptly, and was gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **This chapter is dedicated to the lovely and witty Nade-Naberrie, whose professional medical expertise was greatly appreciated during my research - it is absolutely fantastic to have such a community of smart, creative and savvy readers I can pose my questions to. (And about a million thanks again to Darcy, for the research and brainstorming into the evening gown I've trashed here.)**
> 
> **Settings, scenery, wardrobe and more are always at veroniqueclaire*tumblr*com - and longtime phans, if you don't know it yet, there is an amazing community on Tumblr nowadays. It's like the phandom in 2002 or so, when we were all kids - artistic and exuberant and supportive and reading nuanced interpretations into characters and everything I love about the wonderful kind of folks who appreciate POTO.**
> 
> **I'm going to try and get the images for this chapter published to my Tumblr in the next fifteen minutes before I board - but if not, check back tomorrow and I'll post them from the other side of the ocean. :-)**


	13. Chapter 13

Holding him her arms had felt like _relief_.

Christine pressed her face into the warm washcloth for far longer than was needed to remove the remains of her makeup, unable to stop mulling over that single thought. Of course, she had been relieved to see Erik when he returned; relieved he hadn't been hurt, relieved to be back in the safety his very presence provided - and yet the _relief_ she had felt in touching him felt different entirely. It was more like in ballet, holding an arabesque for what felt like hours as her muscles strained and Mme Giry critiqued - and the comfort of finally being able to collapse after rehearsal, to stop holding her breath and some impossible pose.

Eventually, she raised her head to examine her face in the gold-framed mirror in the train cabin's miniscule bathroom; the smeared mascara was gone, and beneath it she looked tired.. but she was alive and relatively uninjured. From what she could see looking over her shoulder in the mirror, her skin was bruised and scraped above the low-cut back of the dress; she did her best to swipe at the dried blood, and eventually decided to just wait to deal with it until Erik returned. Assuming he ever returned.

He had easily been gone for thirty minutes; surely the train wasn't so large that he was still searching it to see if Vrioni's guards had followed. Had he encountered trouble... or was he avoiding her?

The rhythmic clatter and sway of the train should have been comforting, but all she could do was pace around the tiny rooms of the cabin, wondering and worrying, glancing at the small silver clock by the bedside.

She wondered briefly about how she would lock the cabin behind her, if she were to venture out - before realizing that with her purse in her hand, there were literally no belongings save Erik's jacket and hat that would be left behind in the cabin. She almost laughed, at how strange this all was, but the hair-trigger hitch her her own voice made her wonder if she wouldn't just start crying instead, and she was so ready to be _done_ with tears.

She'd been sad Christine in grade school, the poor girl who'd lost her mother; worried Christine as a teenager, charity student with the sick father; orphaned Christine in a deep depression, trying to put herself through a music degree all alone - and then she'd been happy, for the briefest of moments, even if she'd worried she was going mad in the process. The _Voice_ , the lessons, the singing she'd worked so damned _hard_ on was finally showing promise. However absurd it had been, she'd had an _angel_ , and some success - and then she'd had an old friend who'd grown up into handsome dream of a guy sweeping her off her feet.

...And then she'd known new depths of misery and guilt and conflict and fear - and weeks of being torn in every direction, crying out of the sheer helplessness and powerlessness of not being able to do _anything_ without hurting someone. Today should have been more traumatic than anything she'd ever been through - but she didn't want to curl up in the safety of the cabin and cry. She was _tired_ of crying - and she was tired of waiting.

Erik had been gone for at least an hour; she picked up his tuxedo jacket from where she'd left it on the couch, noting again that there were several items in the pockets. If she was going to teach him about boundaries, she needed to start by respecting his, she thought, and resisted the impulse to look through them, hoping none of the objects were weapons. The jacket did little to conceal the absurdity of wearing a tattered evening gown on a train, but Christine was satisfied that it hid her scraped-up back well enough. She slid the lacquered cherrywood cabin door open to venture out into the hallway.

One side of the train car's hallway was a row of ornate windows, revealing a sunset-lit rolling landscape that she could barely make out through the cut-glass panes; the other was a series of polished doors like the one she'd just stepped through. No signs of other people in either direction, and she eventually chose at random to walk toward the front of the train. At the front end of the car was a door with a brass handle to crank it open to pass into the next car - but it, too was empty. Lights were clearly on in some of the cabins, and she could hear televisions playing in some of them, but there were no other passengers - and she wasn't sure what she would do if she had encountered one - ask if they had seen a tall man in a scuffed tuxedo with a large flesh-toned mask covering half his face?

She nearly jumped when the door at the end of the car opened when she was still five feet away - but it was just a train conductor, pushing along a gleaming trolley laden with snacks and drinks.

The uniformed man smiled and said something in Turkish, then at her confused glance switched to English. "May I help you? There's only the observation car ahead of us; if you're looking for the bar or the dining car, they're both at the rear of the train."

"Actually, I'm looking for," she paused, "my traveling companion. We're in the third cabin of the car before this one. He's… very tall, and -"

"Ah," he said, looking down at what must have been a printed passenger manifest. "Mrs. Calatrava, is it?"

"...Yes," Christine replied with uncertain conviction, racking her brain for which name had been on the most recent set of passports.

"I spoke with your husband earlier; he was in search of the concierge desk, wanted to see about getting replacements for some of the toiletries you'd forgotten."

She blinked several times and quickly plastered a smile on her face. Passports printed in pairs, fake ring on her hand, fake _husband_ to go with it - it sounded like Erik was relatively safe, and she should probably confirm whatever story he'd given. "I _am_ very forgetful," Christine said with a touch of coy innocence, suddenly an actress in her own life and turning in a decent performance. "Where was the concierge desk again?"

"Five cars behind you," the man pointed over her shoulder. She had nodded thanks and begun to turn when he continued, "Is there anything you'd like from the refreshment cart before you go?"

Christine looked back over her shoulder, prepared take a sparkling water or a magazine just to appease him, when she noticed a row of thin black neoprene bags. "What are those?" she asked, pointing.

"On-board entertainment," the conductor replied. He unzipped one of the pouches and handed over a small tablet computer, just larger than the size of her hand. "There's a fine selection of movies and music on each of these, and you can connect to the train's wireless network if you'd like to download more, or check your email."

She stared at the device as though he were handing her a key to another dimension. Unfiltered information was the one luxury Erik had denied her the past few weeks, always saying that the less she knew the safer she was; but the infinite trust that required was wearing on her. She had a right to know what was going on - to see it for herself and make up her own mind about what Erik was telling her. "That would be lovely," she said, unable to shake the feeling that she was reaching toward a serpent with an apple as she took the tablet he offered.

"Most passengers do find that the wifi is quite slow; the train uses a shared cellular broadband connection, and it will only work in metropolitan areas. We should have about an hour more of signal before we're out of the suburbs of Istanbul, and then it will resume again tomorrow morning when we're approaching Bucharest. I'll come by each compartment to collect the devices before the final stop in Venice."

The man continued on, polite and chatty as he showed her the various features of the device, but it was all she could do not to rip it out of his hand and run back to their cabin. When she finally extracted herself from the conversation and began walking back to the cabin, wide steps to keep her balance as the train swayed, her mind raced ahead, a thousand possibilities branching off in her mind of what she wanted to do first, and what she could do, without threatening their safety. Reading the news was obviously safe. Sending an email from her account to Raoul could surely be tracked to their location, but she wondered about checking her mail…

Back at their cabin she slid the door shut behind her and locked it, energized and moving quickly; she found the wifi signal, entered the password he'd given her, and opened the web browser.

How strange to type her own name into the search box.

The progress indicator spun at the corner of the browser tab, indicating it was loading, slowly.. and then a page of results, with a half-dozen news stories at the top, all with varying headlines.

"False Leads in Oz For Missing American Christine Daae."

"Did Troubled Soprano Fake Her Own Kidnapping?"

"FBI: NY Met Opera Terrorist May Have Had Help."

She swallowed, and clicked on the first story, noting it was at least several weeks old. Not much recent news. It was a rather dull account on an Australian news site about FBI agents following up on a credit card trail - but the accompanying picture made her breath catch and her heart wrench. The photo showed a relatively nice, nondescript modern hotel with police cars out front - but standing off to the side, head ducked and talking on a cell phone was a blond figure she'd know anywhere. Her fingers shook as she typed "Raoul De Chagny" into the search box and clicked on the first story.

The page was taking an agonizingly long time to load; it had been several minutes and Christine glanced furtively at the door to the cabin, suddenly worried that Erik would be back any moment now. She picked up her purse and the tablet and went into the bedroom, and slid the adjoining door shut, buying herself a few extra seconds of warning whenever he would return. The progress bar was still spinning to indicate the page was loading and her heart was racing at this point, eager to get some kind of news of how Raoul was doing before Erik came back.

Oh, god. It was taking so long because it was a video clip.

"...We're here on day 18 of Christine Daae's disappearance, speaking with her fiance, Raoul De Chagny, younger brother of US Senator Philippe De Chagny." A woman in a fuchsia suit jacket was holding a microphone and smiling brightly at the camera, before turning to the visibly exhausted man standing beside her. "Raoul, you're a young man of remarkable courage and persistence in a situation like this. I think a lot of people would like to know, how is it that you're able to remain so strong?"

Even in a pixelated video, she could tell Raoul was unwell. That he hadn't been sleeping. That he was probably worried sick while she was off playing jet set fugitive with Erik. Her chest felt like it was collapsing with guilt and grief, and then he answered the newscaster. "Love," he said helplessly. "I love Christine with all of my heart; we've been friends since we were children. I'll never give up hope, because I love her. We will _find_ her. The man that kidnapped her - and she was kidnapped, I don't care what anyone says, she never would have gone willingly - that man is a coward, and a _manipulator_ , and -"

The doorknob to the cabin's exterior entry rattled and she heard the door begin to slide open. Clear and present panic surged over the ache of guilt; she quickly hit the mute button on the device, and looked around for a place to hide it, finally slipping it in the space between her purse's torn fabric lining and the leather exterior, and stowing the handbag under the bed. It was so much easier to bury the feelings of remorse, her shame at how much she was hurting Raoul even in this moment - to push it all to the back of her mind again and focus simply on the moment at hand, on the chaos they'd experienced that day. Christine slipped off the jacket and laid it across the bed, then took a deep breath and opened the bedroom door.

"There you are -" she began, addressing Erik's back as he secured the door behind him. "I was just about to take a nap. You were gone for so long…"

The door was clearly locked by now, yet Erik still did not turn away from it to face her. He had acquired a jacket - clearly too short for him, his shirt cuffs fully exposed below the jacket's own cuffs. She saw his shoulders rise, and fall once, as though he were steadying himself — and then, as though no time had passed at all, he brusquely pivoted to reveal one arm laden with two crisp burgundy paper bags with the train's logo embossed on them in gold.

"I gathered whatever supplies I could from the concierge and the amenities desk," he said blithely, walking past her and placing the bags onto the narrow table against the window. Erik passed a hand inside the pocket of the ill-fitting jacket he wore and withdrew two cell phones, placed them on the table, and then reached inside each of the pockets of his trousers and withdrew several more mobile phones of various types. On her questioning look, he continued, his tone dry and unapologetic, "Some of the supplies I obtained from the bar car."

Some previous version of herself would have been extremely uncomfortable with the idea that Erik had just apparently pickpocketed a half-dozen mobile phones. At the moment, it just felt like some twisted form of survival.

She moved his fedora off the side table to the seat to make room for the bag's contents, and realized, suddenly, the incongruity of him leaving behind such a key piece of his everyday armor against being _seen_. "You left, so suddenly… you went out without your hat."

"It wasn't pleasant." He replied curtly, suggesting the subject was closed for discussion.

Christine wondered for the hundredth time if she would ever understand what it was like for him; the pain of knowing your face would make anyone uncomfortable or even repulsed to see. But millions of people around the world were scarred or burned or had suffered painful birth defects; they faced the same awful prejudices and unkind comments - and the same humanity and politeness - or even kindness - that most people would try and respond with, once they were over the surprise. How were they able to face the world unmasked when Erik could not? What kind of life had taught him to think the worst of everyone? How could she be so concerned with what he was feeling, when the man she was engaged to was clearly feeling so much worse, half a world away?

"This is for your head," he interrupted her thoughts, showing a plastic bag full of ice cubes wrapped in what appeared to be a bar towel.

She nodded thanks, and pressed it against the sore place at the base of her skull. "And that?" she asked with a gentle joke in her voice, pointing at the three airplane-sized miniature bottles of scotch he withdrew from the paper bag next.

"...Is for mine," Erik grimaced. "There are a number of thoughts I'd rather not be thinking at present."

She sat down on the cushioned bench that ran the length of the cabin's sitting room wall, and scooted toward the window to make room for him to sit as well. "Are we out of danger, then?"

"You have been in danger since the moment our lives crossed paths," he said, serious but calmly matter-of-fact. He twisted two of the tiny bottles of scotch open as he spoke. "I have been under attack since birth for my appearance, and the… business avenues I chose to pursue as a younger man made me more than enough enemies to last a lifetime."

Erik withdrew a short, wide, glass from the shelf of glassware below the window, and emptied both bottles of scotch into it. "So you are always in harm's way, so long as you know me. The question is whether the danger is chronic or acute; today's events certainly put us into the latter category. But - I checked every car and the train was clear. If any of Vrioni's guards were sufficiently ambulatory to attempt to follow us, they were unsuccessful. No one knows that we're here and there aren't any stops until tomorrow morning - meaning for the next ten hours, our environs are relatively secure. "

Christine drew a deep breath, taking this all in, noticing as his glance flicked to his left; the cushioned bench she sat on spanned the width of the cabin, and he was clearly eyeing the expanse of space beside her. With one hand he deftly unscrewed the cap of the third mini-bottle and poured it into his glass, and then sat, decisively yet stiffly, leaving an obvious amount of distance between them.

Something about all of this struck her as absurd, and without thinking further she reached over, took an identical glass from the shelf, placed it on the table beside his, and picked up his glass to pour one third of its contents into hers.

"Then I guess we toast to 'relatively secure environs,'" she said wryly, lifting her glass and gesturing toward him.

He recovered quickly from the blatant bafflement that crossed his expression, and within moments had picked up his own glass and tapped it against hers gently, then taken a healthy swallow. "I should have asked; I'm sorry. I'd never known you to have a taste for whiskey."

Christine took a sip and did her best not to cough at that very moment. It was smoky and almost toffee-like in smell - but _strong_. She swallowed and smiled, feeling bold. "You've never known me to do a lot of the things I've done lately."

He tilted his head; and when he looked at her, his gaze was one of fascination. After a long moment, he nodded. "Touché."

It felt comfortable, sitting beside him, leaning back against the cushioned wall, watching the evening scenery fly by, feeling a sense of almost... camaraderie, of having survived something awful together, and resting in solidarity now as they nursed their wounds. The icepack was uncomfortably cold, but it improved the dull ache at the back of her head, and they sat in peaceful silence, sipping from their tumblers of whiskey and looking out the window, sharing the requiescence of utter exhaustion.

"What was… that red rope?" She finally ventured to ask, genuinely curious.

"A fine bit of nanotech engineering manufactured in the Punjab region of India," he replied, sounding tired but practical. "Microscopic machines in each fiber of the rope begin twisting like turbines on impact, making it tighten entirely of its own volition. Depending on how tightly it is initially thrown, it will strangle within a few minutes. It's an extremely efficient weapon that doesn't show up on a metal detector; I travel with one at all times, but it's best not to use it in public. If a 'gravity-defying lasso' was mentioned in a news story, witnessed by dozens of bystanders… Khan would know immediately I was the responsible party. A masked man getting in a punchup at a restaurant is bad enough, but insufficiently remarkable to rise to the level of international news."

"How would Agent Khan connect it to you?" Pragmatic questions seemed the easiest; if she questioned why he'd lived a life that required such constant defense or how safe his life was now, she might spiral into a far darker territory than she was willing to contend with.

"I designed it for a wealthy woman in Tehran who previously employed us both."

"Was the woman some kind of…" Christine struggled for the terminology. "Government defense contractor?"

He looked surprised, and then a little sad, as he turned his head away from her and responded, looking straight ahead. "No. Just a sadist with too much oil money. She paid me a sickening amount of money to do away with her son's enemies, and paid Khan a good deal of money to look the other way. I'm not particularly proud of the work."

"Because you had to kill people?' she ventured, sympathetically.

"Because I did it for her amusement," he said grimly, "and it was a level of caprice I eventually found repugnant." He turned to look at her again, looking as though he were bracing himself for her reaction.

Never had he been so open about his past, or admitted to having… killed people, though she'd suspected for long that Buquet hadn't been the first person he'd put to death. There was so much she wanted to ask - but she suspected remaining calm, curious but non-judgemental, was the only way he'd allow this line of conversation to continue.

"Was that your job with Vrioni as well?"

"In Albania, I eliminated a targeted group of encroaching rivals in the weapons industry, and assassinated a politician who had been bribed to forestall some legislation and was failing at the task. I terminated our partnership when Vrioni began making arms deals with the Army of Republika Srpska, and I found I rather disliked the idea of being complicit in what I saw, in my narrow-minded way, as facilitating _fucking genocide_. I do have _limits_." He spoke levely, darkly, one hand curled into a straining fist, gripping the material at the side of his pants leg, and Christine wondered what he was feeling at telling her all of this. Anger? Fear?

"So…" she took another successful swallow of the scotch. "You were an assassin, for a living."

"Yes," Erik said steadily, eyes staring intently at hers as though he wanted to be sure that she heard him, "I was."

Strangely, it was sympathy and not fear that she felt, leaning her head against the cushioned seat back and meeting his gaze, trying to understand the brutality of the world he had seen. She should be terrified - she was having a drink with a professed hit man - and instead she felt _special_. Surely this was some fatal character flaw on her part, a resistance to the darwinian urge for self-preservation and avoidance of danger… and yet nothing had actually changed. He was still the same man she had come to know, and she had always known he was dangerous.

"It doesn't sound like they were good people, though... that you killed. Maybe they deserved it?"

He winced, and then pressed a hand over his brow. "I don't know anymore. By most measures, I'm every bit as evil as most of them. Or at least I thought so, before I met you. Here I was, monster of a human being on every level, and suddenly I wanted to _help_ someone. And I began to wonder, how wicked could a man be, before he was beyond redemption, before he was a 'bad person' who deserved whatever foul fate he encountered? What is the worth of a man so broken, so soulless… who suddenly finds the one person he wants to be _wonderful_ to…" He shook his head wearily.

So many months she had wondered why he had chosen her - worried even, strange that it was, that Erik loved her because she was the only woman broken and desperate enough to have entertained the idea that an _angel_ was speaking to her… "Do you think I'm your soulmate?" she asked, before she lost her courage in this line of questioning.

"No," he said decisively. and there was a crushing feeling her chest before he continued, "...I think you are something much more remarkable. I think you might be my soul itself... The only peace I have ever known. The only good I have ever wanted to do."

It was strange, the sensation of freefall, of plummeting, only to be caught again, missed heartbeats catching up at a rapid pace. She took a healthy sip of her drink and found her voice and something reasonable to say, all while her thoughts raced ahead. "Erik... I can't be your conscience."

"No, but you can be a powerful motivation. Frankly, the influence you have over me is…" he shook his head slowly from side to side in an evident loss of words. "Let's say it's 'unsettling.' I'm not used to doing _anyone's_ bidding, let alone doing something that would endanger the only person on this bloody planet I hold dear."

"I'm sorry," she said genuinely.

"You have _no_ idea what you were asking of me back there," he said through a grimace, his entire posture growing tense as he seemed to struggle to control his temper. "I would burn the world to the _ground_ to keep you safe, and _you_ asked me to risk your life and mine to avoid harming the employees of a despicable businessman who would kill a million innocents if would turn a better profit."

"I was terrified." She came quickly to her own defense. "I'm sorry -" The train jolted to the side and she stuck a hand out to catch herself from falling forward, her palm landing on the cushioned seat between them.

"You asked me not to take the opportunity to rid myself forever of a man like _that_ \- and the part that sickens me is that I complied. I put your life in danger to appease your _whim_ over a situation you knew _nothing_ about, because you didn't trust my judgement." His words were angry, but there was devastation in his tone.

"Maybe I had such faith in your abilities that I thought you could do it without taking the easy way out and killing them." She threw up her hands, verging on exasperated but feeling powerful in her stance.

"Easy?" he tilted his head in disbelief. "Have you ever studied tactical threat assessment? Hand to hand combat while outnumbered is a literal worst-case scenario, as bad as it gets. The only option is to reduce the number of assailants until you're no longer outnumbered, and yes, the most expedient way to do that is sometimes to kill them. You can snap a neck in seven seconds, and every non-lethal method of incapacitation takes _longer_ ; it's a call you sometimes have to make. You asked me to relinquish that option."

"I _panicked_ ," Christine said plainly, feeling unashamed, and almost surprised at herself. "I'm genuinely sorry, but I couldn't have known what we were getting into. You haven't given me a lot of information through all of this - and then when you do, it's the moment I need it and I must unquestionably accept it. I need to feel like more of an equal, not a child."

"...I tell you that I used to murder for profit, and you're _talking back_ to me about my communication shortcomings?" She couldn't tell if the dazed look in his eye was shock or adoration.

"...You really didn't kill the guards back at the helipad, after you sent me downstairs?" Christine finally asked.

"They were both breathing when I left, though the blond one might not be for long without medical treatment. I did what you asked, even though it jeopardized both of our lives to do so." Erik looked away from her and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and cradling his head in his hands, looking at the ground as he spoke in a low, grave voice. "Do you understand, what it means to me, to let you come into danger? There is _one_ thing I can do for you now, and that is protect you - the only reason you would choose to be here with me right now - and you ask me _not_ to do it in the best way I know how. I don't know what the point is. The things I have to do to stay alive will always drive you away from me."

"Is that what you think?" She ran a hand through her hair in exasperation. "Being some kind of bodyguard… Erik, that's not what I want from you."

He turned his head toward her, the question wavering, unasked, in his eyes.

"Look…" she trailed off, still locked in eye contact with him, and began again more gently. "Today is the first time you've ever expressed respect for any life besides mine. I have to be honest… that freaks me out. I didn't want you to kill anyone you didn't have to. Try to be understanding! It was my first restaurant shoot-up."

The exposed corner of his mouth twitched, as though he were stifling an unwanted urge to laugh, and some of the tension seemed to relax from his appearance as he spoke, sounding more weary than angry now. "Do you think I am so detached from humanity that I would kill someone who didn't present a genuine threat?"

Christine met his gaze and said, softly, "Sometimes."

"I see."

She took a deep breath, waiting for a verbal explosion that never came.

"Christine," he passed a hand over his face, seemingly lost, and as it drew away she could see the flesh-toned latex of his mask was loose at the chin. "...Someday I hope to have the opportunity to change that belief. In the meantime, I need you to let me handle our safety, and to trust my assessments in the best way to do so. If there is bloodshed, and it seems unnecessary, it may well be that I know something you do not. Can I have your agreement on that?"

"Yes," she said truthfully, remembering the conversation at the restaurant. "What is it, that he does, Vrioni? He made some kind of threat about -"

"Generally he likes to kill a family member in front of you, give you several months in a holding cell to despise yourself, and then he starts in on one of his torturously slow methods of death. He's the type of man who will execute a VP in a 9am shareholders meeting, just to make sure no one's forgotten he can. His own family is exceptionally well hidden to prevent retaliation."

She shuddered. "I can't imagine… doing business with someone like that."

"I had nothing to lose, and an exceptionally high threshold for bodily pain. It was a fitting partnership at the time." He shrugged emotionlessly, and she raised an eyebrow, looking straight into his eyes. Several moments and he relented, the facade of all-powerful indifference slipping a bit.

"I never needed anything," he finally said, quietly, sitting up and leaning back against the seat again. "It was a form of strength - if there was nothing I needed, there was no way I could ever feel loss. How can you take something from a man who requires nothing? I was careless with my own life, but vicious to anyone who threatened it; it was almost as though I wanted to stay alive to spite whoever was attacking me. I spent decades of my existence going through near-deliberate exercises in reckless abandon… and then I needed you."

She wasn't sure how long they sat like that, in the moments that followed: feeling the gentle bumps and sway of the train, leaning back against the seat with their heads turned to face one another, not breaking eye contact.

The urge came to her again to touch him - in comfort? In sympathy? In closeness? ...But the last time she'd taken his hands he'd fled for an hour, and what they both needed now was rest. Surely there was some other kindness she could show him. Christine noticed, again, the side of his mask drooping, the twisted red skin visible just beyond the loose edge; whatever adhesive he must use probably wasn't designed to withstand hand-to-hand combat.

She took a deep breath. "Your mask - it's a little loose. Would you be more comfortable if you took it off?"

His hand flew to the side of his face, covering the exposed inch of skin. "Haven't you had enough trauma for one day?" he snapped darkly. "Where is my suit coat?"

Christine pointed at the bedroom, and looked in disappointment as he slid the bedroom door shut behind him and locked it. The view outside the window was completely dark now, with only the occasional lights visible from small houses on the hills of the Turkish countryside. Her thoughts drifted back to the video clip of Raoul, and her stomach twisted with guilt; she needed to find a way to get some kind of message to him, to tell him not to worry. To tell him... what, exactly? She crossed her arms and stared at the ceiling.

Several minutes passed before she heard the door unlock and Erik emerged, wearing a stiff white mask of the kind he normally wore when he wasn't out in public. "I keep the necessities on my person," he said stiffly, by way of explanation, and she realized the mask must have been one of the items she'd felt in the pockets of his jacket.

"I was trying to be nice," she said, worn out and frustrated. "You think everything's some kind of insult or attack, and that's never what I mean. I wonder if you'll ever believe me."

"That has not been my experience in life," he said quietly, "but if I could ever believe that of anyone, it would be you."

She smiled, a little sadly, as she murmured, "Thank you."

Erik stepped over toward the table where their glasses of scotch sat, half-finished. He lifted his own and took a healthy swallow - and then seemed to reconsider, and took another before saying, "If you're ready, we should probably bandage your back now."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Whew, so glad to finally have this chapter up! I took a few writing detours on the way - including a Volée "deleted scene" written from Erik's point of view and a Leroux AU, so check my author page if you're interested in reading those. A few of you have been asking to know more about Erik's history, so I was glad to have a chance to fill some of that in with this chapter, drawing from a modernized version of Kay.**
> 
> **My favorite part of writing this chapter was having Christine stand up to Erik consistently now** **. She's the strongest person in the original Leroux, and it's really satisfying to write her growth as a character here. I would love to hear what you think! And as always, images at veroniqueclaire*tumblr*com**
> 
> **P.S. This chapter owes thanks to the fabulous tumblr HowToFightWrite, whose archives had much of the info I needed about how Erik would have handled Vrioni's guards.**


	14. Chapter 14

The scotch was unquestionably for his nerves.

Each step was methodical and calculated, as Erik removed a package of antiseptic wipes, a few gauze pads, and a roll of medical tape from the burgundy paper bag he'd brought back from the concierge desk, and laid them out on the small table. Every action was that of a competent battlefield surgeon preparing to treat a wound - but his demeanor radiated anxiety. How little human contact he must have had, if the prospect of touching her with even a clinical purpose was so unsettling.

With the bag now empty, he folded it, creasing the edges with unnecessary meticulousness, and set it aside - then removed the ill-fitting jacket he had apparently stolen from another passenger, and folded it with military precision as well. Beneath the suit coat his white tuxedo shirt was scuffed and bloodied, and she understood the need to conceal it when he was moving about the train.

"Is any of that blood yours?" she asked, trying to lighten the mood. "Seriously, you went through a lot more today than I did. How badly are you hurt?"

Erik glanced up at her, clearly startled, and she wondered what thoughts she'd interrupted. He took a moment, seemingly composing himself, before finally responding with glib nonchalance. "Earlier, I was fairly convinced that one of those upstanding young gentlemen had broken my collarbone, but -" he rolled his right shoulder back as if testing it, "that's usually much more painful by this point. It's probably just horrifically bruised."

"Usually?" She frowned sympathetically.

His lips pressed into a narrow line, reluctantly nodding agreement. "I'm rather well-versed in blunt force trauma." he said without affectation, and that sad truth hung between them for a moment before he went on.

"Other than the clavicle, it's just a messy assortment of scrapes and contusions. I don't think there are any phalangeal fractures, which is a small mercy - but it will be some time before I'm able to play the violin again." He held up one hand and turned it front to back as evidence, and she could feel her own face crumpling into a wince at how bruised and swollen his knuckles were, clearly having worsened in the hours since they'd boarded the train.

The flood of compassion came quickly, overpowering any worries about _certainty_ or _sending signals_ \- and with determination she leaned over, picked up the ice pack she'd grown tired of holding against the lump on her head, and marched the two steps to cross the cabin and take his wrist in her left hand. Erik flinched at the contact, but before he could argue she set the ice pack gently atop his fingers, cradling his injured hand in her own.

"Sit," she implored, nodding her head toward the bench, "Just sit, for five more minutes. Let me take care of you."

He stood rigidly still, staring at her, and yet the pulse at his wrist beneath her fingers was racing, and she imagined his thoughts must be as well. _Gentle, careful, take it slow…_ "Please," she implored, gently pulling his arm. He blinked, and eventually let her lead him back to the cushioned bench and sat down. She sat and turned, crossing her legs and sitting sideways on the bench to face him. "Give me your other hand."

Erik obliged silently, and as she held both his hands in her left and kept the ice pack atop them with her right, she realized this might be the longest she'd ever seen him go without letting his wit or his words surround him like armor. She moved the bag of ice gently across his battered knuckles, expecting that it might be rather painful - but he seemed to be watching their joined hands, his gaze rapt yet bewildered, as though it were a movie happening to someone else.

"Is it too much?" she said, and then feeling strangely nervous, gestured at the ice pack. "The cold, I mean."

"Yes. It's rather... intense," he said with some difficulty, and he clearly didn't mean the cold at all. His glance leapt up, hesitantly, to meet hers, and he murmured fondly, shyly, "Don't change a thing."

A long moment passed and she eventually broke the gaze, looking back down at the bony hands she held. His knuckles had the worst of it; each hand had two rows of scrapes and bruises, one atop each joint, the aftermath of the punches he'd delivered. Purple and red swelling radiated out around the larger knuckles, and on his left hand it traced up the back, almost reaching his wrist. She kept the bundle of ice cubes moving, not allowing either hand to sit under the cold for too long; years of icing her toes after the pointe shoes had come off had taught her the risk of self-inflicted frostbite.

"You're giving me quite the motivation to keep getting injured," he said in a low voice, as though he were anxious to fill the silence.

She blushed to remember her attempts to minister to his wounded arm in the cramped airplane lavatory, feeling a rush of embarrassment and something else, pulse-racing and heady, at the memory. But this time there was no flight attendant to interrupt, no awkwardness to halt their interactions, and so the moment stretched on, almost comfortably. The dripping water from the ice pack was soaking the skirt of her gown, but it didn't really bother her. Her knees were pressed against the side of Erik's leg as she faced him, sitting crosslegged, and the rocking of the train occasionally pushed them closer.

That didn't bother her, either.

After several minutes the rigid tension seemed to disappear from his posture; the protective hunch of his shoulders was visibly lessened, and he seemed overall less on the edge of fight-or-flight. She shifted the ice pack to her other hand, and resumed supporting his fingers in her own. How many months ago had he offered her his hand, walking one night through the tunnels from the Met to his home, only for her to gasp at how cold it was? And now they sat, her hands as wet and freezing from the ice as his, her fingers stroking soothingly across his palms, caring for him... she raised her head and blushed at the transfixed look in the mismatched eyes that were trained on her, unblinking.

"What?" she smiled and ducked her chin, feeling almost coy.

He swallowed, and shook his head in tender amazement. "You know I love you," he began softly. "I suppose I am just… continually discovering how much that could be."

He had said the words to her a dozen times, each previous occasion fraught and intense and with immense pressure upon her. How surprising to hear them now, and to feel almost honored. To feel understood.

"Thank you," she whispered, and meant it.

"I'm utterly serious. After all you've seen today - heard today - here you are," he looked down at their hands and his voice broke, at a loss for words to describe the simple act. He shook his head again. "...And after I've caused you nothing but pain. What on earth are you made of, Christine Daaé?"

"I don't know." She looked up and gave him a half smile. "I keep finding out."

He looked at her with awe, with adoration; the urge came to reach out and cup his cheek with one hand, as she had done so many times with Raoul - and the tenderness in her chest rapidly chilled. Even if she had no fiancé to betray; even if she were free to do something as simple as returning some affection to the man who was so in love with her - something as innocent as putting her hand to his face would probably never be possible with Erik. The threat of his temper, his rages, it all loomed ominously over the happy moments, and she didn't deserve a lifetime of walking on eggshells to avoid setting him off.

 _A lifetime_. She had a _fiancé_ ; a loving, kind, and caring fiancé, and here she was thinking about a lifetime with -

"You know, I think I'm more tired than I realized," Christine said abruptly, before her feelings could evidence themselves in her expression. "Could we get my scrapes cleaned up, so I can get some sleep?"

"Of course," he said politely, withdrawing his hands from hers and taking the ice pack to set aside. A formalness had come over his manner and she could feel his emotions withdrawing as quickly as hers had. He pulled the cuff of his shirt taut with one hand and began trying to roll it up, struggling against the unfastened French cuffs flapping open.

"You've lost your cufflinks," she remarked, feeling the urge now herself to break the silence.

"Hazards of war. We'll need to do some considerable replenishing of supplies. I'll acquire a quick change of clothes for both of us as soon as we leave the train. And then longer-term, once we're in a city with reasonable options I'll procure a more suitable ongoing wardrobe."

"I'd like some jeans," Christine interjected. "All of the clothes in that suitcase… they were beautiful, but kind of formal. They just weren't really me. I need to choose my outfits this time. A present now and then is nice, but I'm not a doll you have to dress up."

A brief look that almost seemed like... mortification... flashed in his eyes, which was odd; but then he was quickly responding. "A _doll_. Of course - no. That's not at all what I want. I hope I have never implied such a thing."

Erik turned and rather conspicuously busied himself with setting out the remainder of the medical supplies.

His discomfort was unexpected, but she was beginning to accept that he might never be predictable. She sat down on the bench and waited.

"If you would… lift up your hair," he began, with control and restraint marking every word.

She gathered the bedraggled curls and pulled them to one side over her shoulder, and she could hear Erik's sharp draw of breath at the sight of her back. Then, hesitantly, he approached and seemed to examine it; cool fingertips traced across her shoulder blades, brushing the remaining strands of hair out of the way.

"Scrapes, minor lacerations. Nothing that will need stitches. Considerable bruising."

"That, I could tell," she said, trying to lighten the mood. "I think we're both going to be black and blue for a while."

He didn't respond; just turned and picked up some supplies from the table.

"All the times I thought I wanted to show you my world…" his voice trailed off hollowly. "This isn't what I meant."

"It's not that bad," she said, suddenly feeling the urge to defend her ability to keep up with him. "I was a dancer. I'm used to injuries."

"This will hurt much more than that," he said, tearing open a packaged antiseptic wipe and applying it to her skin; she arched her back and bit her tongue to keep from crying out at the sting.

"I'm sorry," he touched the antiseptic to a cut along her spine and she twitched in pain. His hand caught her shoulder blade as it jerked back; it steadied her, and then moved away sooner than was necessary, as though their skin had never met. "I would give a million dollars for some lidocaine right now. I mean that literally."

She breathed a quick thanks amidst the discomfort, and he resumed working in silence, opening package after package of the antiseptic to clean the wounds, then began covering them with gauze patches with medical tape. Christine stared at the window and the night landscape rushing by outside; in the reflection, she could see Erik systematically applying the bandages and the tape, intent with concentration.

"Are you still angry with me?" she finally ventured to ask.

"Furious," he whispered poignantly, staring straight ahead at her back, then he softened. "No. That's not true. I'm mostly furious with myself at this point. I made so many miscalculations, so many wrong steps, and any one of them should have been fatal. That situation was…" he trailed off. "We were incredibly lucky. I'm not used to that. It feels sickening to think that I left any elements in the equation up to chance."

"You give yourself the weight of the world to carry," she turned and looked over her shoulder at him. "If you told me more of what's going on, let me have more information - I could help. Even if there's nothing I can actually _do_ … maybe just telling me what you were worried about, would make you feel less alone."

She'd be lying if she claimed there wasn't a certain pleasure, now, at this point, in seeing Erik momentarily stunned into silence.

Several moments passed before he met her eyes, and asked, with the weight of an extreme reserve being overcome: "Can you drive a stickshift?"

**XXXXXXXX**

_Istanbul to Sofia; 312 miles, 11 hours_

Christine downshifted the engine smoothly into fifth gear, and finally relaxed a little bit; she was driving in the fast lane, watching the road signs written in Cyrillic script fly by, and consulting the note on the dash where Erik had written the Bulgarian word for "airport". It felt satisfying, to be keeping it together and doing fairly well. Nothing could have ever prepared her for _any_ of this, but at least driving dad's van full of amps and gear to his gigs had taught her how to drive a manual transmission.

The car was a rental, or at least it had been originally. She suspected the large sum of cash Erik had handed over at the small rental car shop at the train station - and the total lack of ID or a credit card being involved - had amounted to something more like an under-the-table purchase. As soon as they'd reached the highway, it had been apparent why Erik had wanted her to drive, and why he hadn't wanted to take a taxi. Sitting in the passenger seat, he'd launched into an intense operation involving a rapid succession of the cell phones he'd stolen aboard the train, talking on one phone while seeming to look up various things on the internet on another. The conversations varied in tone as much as they did in language - she was able to pick out Italian, and Spanish, and what sounded a little like Russian, and he seemed to alternate between beseechingly polite and threateningly forceful.

He finished another call with a scathing tone, hit the power button contemptuously, and then casually threw the phone out the window. This was becoming a bit of a routine; by her count, they were down to three phones, now.

"Watch your speed," Erik tapped the dashboard. "A chat with the local police would be highly inconvenient."

"Sorry," she looked away from the road to glance at the speedometer, which registered 150 Km/H, ten kilometers over the limit. "I'm not used to driving a car that's even capable of exceeding the speed limit."

"I wouldn't have guessed you'd have a lead foot - but other than that you're driving quite well. We have plenty of time; it should be another fifteen minutes to the airport and I've secured us seats on a flight in an hour and a half."

She nodded, keeping her gaze on the road, as he continued.

"We'll stop before the airport and find some kind of store to get a change of clothes - buy whatever you would like, but be prepared for warm weather in a country that dresses modestly; I think we'll be spending several days in Marrakech. I need to go blackmail an old acquaintance... That's all I can say at the moment."

"Thank you," she threw a glance sideways at him, "I like knowing what's going on."

"You asked for information. I certainly hope you're taking notes," his tone was warm, even as he lectured. "I mentioned earlier that your earrings were of decent value - one of the major challenges in a lifestyle of prolonged law-evasion is maintaining sufficient liquidity of assets when your operating expenses are high and it may be a week or more before you can safely visit a bank. Diamonds are a tidy solution - small, easily concealed, valued in most economies. If we get separated, if you need funds: it's a backup option. For formal occasions you can wear them on your person, otherwise, best to carry them. If you'll take the earrings off now, I'll put them in your purse."

It was all she could do to keep her eyes from flashing wide with panic, remembering the tablet computer she had concealed in her handbag.

"My purse is hard to get to at the moment; it's right at my feet. I'll do it myself as soon as we stop."

"Don't forget," he easily accepted her evasion. "Now, when we arrive at the terminal..."

**X **XXXXXXXX****

_Sofia to Rome, 573 miles, 2 hours_

_Rome to Marrakech, 1320 miles, 4 hours_

A rectangle of bright blue sky with round white clouds, surrounded on all sides by the arches of the loggia of the Riad; the view from the courtyard was almost surreal if she reclined on one of the chairs and looked straight up, almost like looking at a centuries-old Turrell skyscape. Art made her think of New York last year; of Raoul's mother filling his living room with paintings worth more than the condo itself in some effort to appease her own disappointment that he'd chosen an anonymous luxury unit in a midtown high-rise instead of the penthouse in a building "of more appropriate significance and status."

Raoul's complete indifference to his family's wealth and position was surely the only reason they had ever become friends. She thought back to that afternoon at Amagansett; her father playing in the band hired for the afternoon at some rich family's clambake. Christine still remembered Papa's violin singing gloriously, an uncomplicated day in the quiet time of their lives, after the loss of her mother and before the agony of his diagnosis. One minute her scarf was whipping away in the wind and suddenly a kid her own age with blond hair flopping adorably over his forehead was vaulting over the edge of the deck to the beach, to run out into the surf and fetch it back for her.

In a way, Raoul had been trying to do the same thing back at the Met; to run out headfirst and try to save her, consequences be damned...

But despite the mistakes he had made, Raoul was wonderful. He was sweet and earnest, confident yet genuine; so good-natured and likeable that he made friends wherever they went. When they dined at his favorite restaurants, the owners would come around to shake his hand, welcome him back with a wholehearted smile - and the busboys would too. In any category she could imagine, he was wonderful, the kind of guy most women would love to meet, would dream of settling down with. Raoul absolutely adored her.

And yet when Erik was around, she kept forgetting about Raoul entirely.

Christine crossed her arms and leaned back against the chaise lounge, looking around the empty courtyard. Palm trees and potted plants added a splash of green to the white walls, and in the center of the tile mosaic floor was a fountain with an octagonal basin; the splash of the water falling was the only noise she'd heard all day, except for the occasional calls to prayer sounding from the minarets.

It was a beautiful place, but being confined there by herself was driving her absolutely stir crazy. Too much time to think. This was the third day Erik had ventured out for some kind of information-gathering expedition that he declined to describe in detail. She was under strict orders to stay within the building's fortress-like walls - Erik had no safehouse of his own in Marrakech, but it was hardly necessary when Moroccan architectural designs seemed share much of his focus on privacy and security. The houses here were built around interior gardens and courtyards; there were no windows on the sturdy clay exterior walls, only internally facing the atrium.

This hotel had been made by linking three riad houses together, for a grand total of three suites, though each suite was itself an entire building. They connected to a central lobby, the only means of entry or exit from the hotel. The experience of walking into the front door had been surreal - outside, the dusty streets had been filled with a crush of people browsing wares from street vendors, raised voices all around her as people haggled over prices; inside was an oasis of tranquility. Tile floors and arched doorways draped with curtains gave way to a series of beautiful courtyards, with fountains, plants, and even an orange tree. The suite itself was perfectly comfortable - multiple sitting rooms, two bedrooms, even a powder room outside each bathroom - and none of the rooms was within range of a wifi signal.

She'd spent the first day resisting the urge to try and use the tablet again, and the second roaming the suite fruitlessly in search of an unlocked wireless network within reach. The hotel's own internet would be charged to the room, and Christine wasn't ready to explain to Erik just yet that wanted the freedom of information that wasn't filtered through him. The tablet used the same generic charger as the collection of cell phones Erik had replenished at the airport, so she could stealthily recharge it while he was out. But without internet access, it was just a frustrating reminder that Erik was still in control; even as he slowly began to let her in, to tell her more, to treat her as an equal, he still would never let her send a message to Raoul. And ever since she saw the news clip and was able to see directly how much agony Raoul was in, the need to contact him had begun to gnaw away at her. Just one message, to tell him she was fine, and not to worry - and that she had no idea how to say this, but that she was strangely happy, most of the time, and maybe it would be better if -

Christine buried her head in her hands.

**X **XXXXXXXX****

"You've been picking at your dinner; is the tagine not to your liking?"

"Oh," Christine looked up from her plate. "No, it's fine, sorry. I'm just… tired, I guess. I haven't been sleeping well."

"That's not it," Erik set his fork down, and his visible eye narrowed beneath the flesh-toned masks he'd begun wearing again, even in private. "You've been quiet all night. Something is bothering you and I need to know what it is."

"I don't know," Christine shook her head, not wanting to get into any of the hours she'd spent brooding about her relationship to Raoul. "I'm just - look, I just don't know. I really am tired."

"I can only imagine," he glowered at her. "It must be so draining to spend evening after evening dining with a man as hideous as I am."

"God dammit, Erik!" She slammed her water glass down. "Not everything is about you, and nothing is ever about your face. Ever."

She waited for him to storm out of the room, or perhaps to meet her outburst with equal fury - but he just sat, staring at her, shell-shocked.

"It _has_ to be," he finally said in a hoarse whisper.

With a sigh, she slumped her shoulders, anger quickly fading, and looked at him questioningly.

"Don't you see? Every injustice… every slight.. the fact that I will inevitably lose you to that damn boy if you ever make up your mind." His voice rang hollowly, and his eyes were filled with despair as they met hers. "If it's not about my face, then it's about _me_."

**X **XXXXXXXX****

_Marrakech to Madrid, 660 miles, 2 hours_

_Madrid to Bogotá, 4990 miles, 12 hours_

_Bogotá to Cartagena, 408 miles, 1 hour_

"Is all of this really necessary?"

"The car, or the curtains? They're marvelous about privacy here, one of the better holdovers from the drug wars."

Christine looked around, bewildered, as a team of uniformed valets walked around the massive SUV, pulling a curtain on a track to completely obscure the vehicle from the outside world before they stepped out from behind the tinted windows. She'd seen airports with less security - and this was supposedly a department store.

"This is less of a car and more of a luxury tank," she looked at him pointedly. "I'm a little hesitant to get out of it just to buy a suitcase and some better clothes."

"It's an exceedingly reasonable place to restock our wardrobes and one of the few on the planet that carries my preferred brand of bulletproof dress shirts, which recent events have convinced me I ought to start wearing again. The store also provides alterations on a short timeframe." On her questioning look, he shrugged. "As though anything off the rack would fit me."

"Not _that_ ," she looked at him emphatically. "Bulletproof dress shirts? Erik, between that and the car, I'm having a hard time believing we're safe here."

"Cartagena is not particularly dangerous," he said patiently. "Unless you've arrived with the intention of strongarming a particularly cranky paramilitary commander in a notorious drug cartel. We'll be perfectly safe right up until our presence is known and the meeting has occurred - and then we'll be very quickly leaving the country. The vehicle is probably overkill, but when have I ever done something halfway?"

Looking out through the thick windshield at the armored plating on the hood of the SUV, she asked, "Is this still about Vrioni?"

"Yes, it's same thing I was after in Marrakech; I'll be using the information I gained there as leverage here. Vrioni knowing of your existence is the most terrifying thing I can imagine; I'm unwilling to live with that thread over our heads, and so I'm preparing something that will either result in détante or outright war."

He looked at the clock embedded in the car's tan leather dashboard. "We have an hour of private shopping reserved - the store will be empty except for us and the employees. Pay for everything in cash and be done in forty-five minutes."

**XXXXXXXX**

The fitting room was overflowing with outfits the clerks had eagerly pushed into her hands, and Christine was occasionally rustling them back and forth and cheerfully answering "Sí, gracias!" in broken Spanish each time a sales associate checked in on her, as she frantically searched for news on the tablet. The department store had an open wireless network and in ten minutes she had caught up on the latest news and gossip surrounding her disappearance.

There were no further stories or interviews with Raoul - but she found he'd made a missing persons community on a social networking site, titled "Bring Christine Daae Home." She couldn't see what anyone had posted there without joining, but there were tens of thousands of members… obviously she couldn't log in to the social network with her own profile, but if she made a fake one, who would be able to tell she wasn't just a random woman in Colombia who wanted to follow the news?

She checked the time on the tablet. Fifteen minutes left, and she needed to actually emerge with some clothes picked out - and there was still an additional item she needed to find in the mens' department. With a deep breath she clicked the button to register a new user, quickly filled out a profile with a fake birthday and a generic name, and then joined the group tracking her own disappearance. The top story showed Raoul, Meg, Madame Giry and a dozen of acquaintances from the Met at a candlelight vigil, blue ribbons pinned to their jackets.

Christine pressed the power button, but not before Raoul's pained expression imprinted itself upon her memory. There _had_ to be a way she could send him a message.

**XXXXXXXX**

_Cartagena to Barranquilla, 84 miles, 2 hours_

The wheels left the runway and Erik slumped over toward the window, leaning the side of his head against the glass in apparent exhaustion and relief.

It had all happened so quickly, in Cartagena; it had taken Erik fewer than five minutes to gather whatever information he needed from this latest contact, and then he was back in the car and swearing, tires squealing as they drove away. He had said little on the stressful drive to the airport in Barranquilla, the speed limit apparently no longer a concern as he piloted the armored SUV with grim determination at well over a hundred miles per hour on narrow highways with questionable pavement. They'd made the flight with only minutes to spare.

"Do we have another enemy to worry about now?" Christine asked, thinking of the three impacts in the rear windshield's bulletproof glass, an icy spiderweb of cracks radiating out from each place where a shot had hit as they'd driven away.

"Rodríguez was just being petulant," Erik said, with a dry tone, but none of the usual lightness of his flippant remarks; he sounded tired. "I might give him a few months to cool off before we head back into his part of the world. He didn't like the deal I proposed - but for a man like him it's just another day at the office. The rain of gunfire at the end was just his way of throwing a tantrum."

She turned to face him in the narrow seat; this was a regional jet, by far the smallest plane she'd ever seen, and even in first class the seats were still rather tiny. It was all she could do not to bump him with her elbow as she reached down into her purse and withdrew the palm-sized flat box.

"I don't know when we'll have a moment to catch our breath again, so…" her voice trailed off as she set the box on the armrest between them. "Now seems like a good time. I got these for you."

His mouth fell open for a moment, whatever he had been about to say having clearly fled his mind entirely, and she could see his adam's apple bob as he swallowed before beginning to speak again.

"Just open it." She nudged the gift toward him.

His bandaged fingers picked up the box and lifted the lid to reveal the inlaid onyx cufflinks she'd found at the last minute while buying her new suitcase and clothes at the department store. Silently, without looking away from the box he held, he reached up and turned on the overhead light and tilted his head, examining the gift in surprise. Sitting this close, she noticed for the first time that he had faint blond eyelashes; then his eyes leapt up to meet hers.

"What's the occasion?" he asked quietly, trying and clearly failing to maintain an image of reserved, casual curiosity.

"I just wanted to.. get you something," she felt almost shy under his gaze, unsure she'd be able to put her motivation into words. "And I remembered you'd lost your cufflinks in Istanbul."

He nodded, not breaking eye contact with her.

"...I had to guess what style you'd want; I couldn't remember what the old ones looked like." This feeling in her chest, fluttery and nervous and almost babbling, was unfamiliar. "I don't know when you'll have occasion to wear them, but -"

"They're perfect." He interrupted definitively, and the warm richness of his voice hung in the air, beautiful and emotional, and it was with surprise that he continued, "You know my taste well."

Erik gestured as though he were about to say something else, but was struggling to corral his thoughts. When the words finally came, it was with awkward hesitation, as though he were trying a phrase in a foreign language for the first time. "...Thank you."

The smile came freely as she replied, "You're welcome. Will we be staying very long in…" she glanced down at the boarding pass in her lap. "Panama City?"

"Just a few hours." He drew a solemn breath. "It's time to give Vladimir Vrioni a call."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **XXXXXXXX**
> 
> **Author's Note: Hope you all enjoyed this chapter with a bit more romance and some of those emotional walls coming down. (Hurt/comfort is a classic genre, but it's just such a good excuse for a little fluff between characters. :-) I'm also finding it's quite fun to write Christine's growth into not only being stronger, but also into realizing that she completely has the upper hand here.**
> 
> **Private department store shopping is a real thing offered in many cities to cater to visiting oligarchs and dignitaries, (and presumably anyone else writing a sufficiently large check.) I can't find evidence of it online, but a guy from Medellín told me that the routine where a parked car is surrounded with curtains before the passengers exit was a service offered by hotels in Colombia during the worst of the drug wars in the 1990s.**
> 
> **An ALW reference I wanted to put into this chapter required a minor bit of retcon on the initial wardrobe, so I posted an updated version of Chapter 3 to keep the continuity. Hat tip to those to catch it. (Again I say: Erik! Look at your life, look at your choices.)**
> 
> **Your reviews and PMs are the thing that keeps me writing; thank you so much! As always, lots of visual imagery to go along with the story at veroniqueclaire*tumblr*com . This chapter will have quite a bit.**


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Author's note: For those who are sensitive to these things, do note that this chapter is decidedly rated T for language.**

_Barranquilla to Panama City: 340 miles, 2 hours._

Night had fallen, and the bay glittered with the reflections of lights from the skyscrapers. From ten stories up she could just barely make out the movement of waves, as the city lights shimmered and glowed on the dark water. Christine turned away from the window, and watched Erik work, as he wordlessly unplugged cables and attached them to a small networking device connected to the laptop they had purchased half an hour ago.

Erik had called the building an Internet Exchange, and it was unlike any she'd been in; from the exterior it looked like an average office tower with rather small windows - but inside it was packed floor to ceiling with row after row of computer servers and networking equipment, a constellation of blinking green lights in any direction she looked, with a few tables and workstations scattered in the aisles. "Think of it as a demilitarized zone between different networks," he had said when they entered. "A hostage exchange for internet traffic, with all the regional players represented. You want to send a request from a Cabletica customer in Alajuela to a website on a Telefonica server in Rio de Janeiro? It comes through here. And if you'd like to have an untraceable conversation, the best place to spoof the origin location of a VOIP call is one where you have physical access to a half-dozen networks."

After a few more minutes of manipulating the cables he stood, and brushed the wrinkles from his suit coat as he set the laptop on a table before looking up to her. "It's shoddy work, but it should suffice."

"Is there anything you don't know how to do?"

"That's far too easy to answer." His tone was light, but the longing was still there, just under the surface.

"What I mean is..." Christine shook her head in mild exasperation. "Most people would be content to be a composer. Or an architect. Or a computer genius."

"Or a cold-blooded mercenary assassin," came his sardonic response, but his eyes were tired. "I used to believe that I'd been given a superior intellect as some form of cosmic compensation… that perhaps the odds had at least been kind in one aspect of my life. But the truth of the matter is that it's only a function of hours applied to any study." He shrugged with forced indifference. "Imagine all of the days and evenings you've spent with friends, with family; holidays and obligations and social engagements of all sorts. Imagine what you could accomplish if you had no other humans in your life, and all you had was time."

"You don't… have no one, anymore," she interjected awkwardly, the casual tragedy of his statement moving her to contradict him, her words in an unplanned rush. "Whatever we are to one another - it is _something_. You know that, right? You have me, in your life. And I'm - I'm glad I am."

Erik tilted his head, and she could see his chest rise and fall several times before he finally murmured, " _Christine_ … " Surprised but pleased, tender in wonderment; his gaze locked on hers and for the first time she saw in his eyes the unhidden desire to move toward her, the urge to rush forward... _perhaps even take her into his arms_.

He seemed to process the moment of joy like an anomaly to be explained, controlled and dismissed, like happiness itself was a dangerous urge that had to be tamped down and tempered. Eventually, he looked down at the laptop on the table between them as though it were the obstacle in their way, and sounded almost resigned as he continued. "I hope you still feel that way once you've heard this call."

With a sad nod, Erik turned back to the laptop; he tapped a few keys, and she could see his entire demeanor hardening, as the sound of a ringing phone began to emanate from the laptop's speakers. Five rings and an angry male voice answered, speaking a language she didn't recognize; from the groggy tone she could surmise that he had just woken up.

"Good morning, Vladimir," Erik growled, melodious with contempt. "I wasn't entirely sure you would answer. I'm delighted to hear you're open to a resolution."

"I'm open to tracking you down and asphyxiating that little brunette you were with," Vrioni's voice hissed, sinister and disembodied, echoing throughout the room..

"Mention her again and this call is over, and I will rain hell upon you; a hell that is vicious and wide-sweeping such as you have yet to even imagine." Erik's voice was full of malice — yet his tone was as matter of fact and controlled as if he'd been discussing the inevitability of death and taxes. "Think of everything you ever saw me do, Vladmir. Think of the horrors of which I am capable. And recall that you haven't yet seen what I'm like when I'm angry."

"Fuck you, _Ankth_. What were you doing in Istanbul? Working for Aydoğan? Trying to sabotage my business again?"

"I work only for myself, now, and I would like to retire our petty grievances." The disdain in Erik's tone permeated his words, sharpening each seemingly polite phrase into a scalpel. "I took twenty million Euro from your account when I broke our contract and left Tirana. I propose that I give you thirty million and we consider this matter resolved. Think of it as an investment in me, which paid out well for you."

"No amount of _money_ will make this over," Vrioni snapped so forcefully that Christine flinched upon hearing it, and Erik's eyes flicked up to meet hers reassuringly.

"I was afraid you would say that. Threats, then." Erik's mouth drew into a grim line, as though he were dealing with something distasteful. "You know of my talents, and you know that if I wanted you dead, I could do away with you at my _leisure_. But you don't fear death as much as discomfort — and so that end, I now am in possession of all of the information one would need to completely gut every bank account belonging to you or one of your shell companies. I have the locations of each of your warehouses and munitions shipments in progress. Let me read them to you, so you know I'm not bluffing."

Calmly, Erik rattled off a list of bank accounts, addresses, cargo ship identification numbers, and names, then paused, waiting for a response. When none came, he continued, "If I chose to destroy you, it would take me only a few keystrokes to take the rest of your disgraceful money for myself, and to hand over the details of your business operations to every law enforcement agency from the local _policia_ to the United sodding Nations Disarmament Task Force. Once you're penniless and powerless... I would make the pain significantly more personal. And on that note, would you be so kind as to put your wife on the line?"

"What the fuck -"

"Do it." Even when Erik was furious, the hypnotic quality of his voice left no room for compromise.

Some moments passed, and she could hear Vrioni muttering before a female voice finally came on the line, and spoke with a heavy accent. "Hello?"

"Now, _Zonje_ Vrioni — May I call you Mirjeta? I have nothing against you other than your taste in men — so I'm hoping you and I can speak somewhat more civilly." Erik's tone lightened, and he seemed to be speaking almost conspiratorially. "As I said in my note at our unfortunate run-in back in Istanbul, your husband has made a formidable enemy in me, and unless he drops the pursuit I will bring ruin to every aspect of his vicious little existence. But Vladimir is the type of man who thinks he can always get more money and that he can outsmart any attack, so I'm hoping you can make him see reason."

"What do you want?" snapped Mirjeta Vrioni's voice over the laptop's speakers, sounding more frustrated and tired than frightened.

"What I _want_ is for your husband to accept my extremely generous offer of financial recompensation, and to reach something approaching détante. I would rather not have to follow through on my _myriad_ options for bringing him pain; I covered most of the finer points earlier — but there is one additional option that I thought would be best delivered to your ears. I've worked rather diligently to come up with a piece of information which Vladimir has gone to extreme lengths to protect: the two of you have a child. Young Pjetër arrives at school at 8:22 each morning at Shkolla Ernest Koliqi. He plays _futbolli_ on Tuesdays with the other children at the Parku i Madh. Would you like me to go on?"

Mirjeta's gasp was audible.

"Tell your husband _this ends here_ ," Erik growled, just as Vrioni's voice came back on the line.

"You fucking _freak_ , I will execute all of the men who could have possibly told you —"

"And I'll still have a source you don't even know exists. You've been bested. Accept it. I'm offering you thirty million and a ceasefire to ease the burn. All you have to do is tell me where you'd like payment sent. You know the appropriate tools to send an untraceable email via the darknet; I can be reached at the following address," and he rattled off a series of numbers. "Take the money and consider this _over_. Listen to your wife."

Erik slammed the laptop shut and pounded both of his fists onto the lid, eyes closed and visibly agitated in so many directions that his steely-yet-scathing demeanor had obscured during the call. She watched him for a moment, then walked forward and put her hand atop one of his. He instantly jolted and jerked away - then stood with his hand out as though it had been burned, eyes momentarily wild with anxiety, visibly horrified that he'd torn his hand away from hers.

"I'm sorry," he growled, sounding almost grief-stricken. "I... have a lifetime of instincts to unlearn."

One of them had to be calm, and so she reached out again across the table, and held her hand there until, with infinite wariness, he took it. Erik's glance darted from their joined hands to her face and back again, as he drew slow heaving breaths and finally said, angry and anguished, "You just saw me threaten a five-year-old. I expected… "

"A threat and an action are different, and if it leads to less bloodshed in the end…" Christine squeezed his hand once and then let it go as as she shrugged, still having trouble putting words to the feeling.

"I don't know whether to commend your newfound moral pragmatism... or feel some terrible sense of self-reproach at having corrupted your principles," he muttered.

"Let me make my own decisions," she raised an eyebrow in warning, lest he continue that line of thought. "Look, maybe I should be upset, but… I don't really care about what you had to say to scare Vrioni enough. Right now what's concerning me is that you just went through something stressful and you're obviously upset. "

"For a man like that, to threaten you — knowing what I know about him… Yes." He squinted his eyes, as though he were livid with rage and struggling to control it. "I am… upset."

Erik pinched the bridge of his nose, and ducked his chin to the side, and drew several breaths, before he began to speak again, in a tone so measured and tight he might have been reading some particularly repellent corporate terms and conditions.

"I need you to appreciate how much I hate _everything_ about this plan. It is risky and _in_ _poor taste_ , and if I thought I had any other options to ensure our ongoing safety without completely alienating you, I would be pursuing them. Killing Vrioni back in Istanbul would have been safer, cleaner, and completely justified. My moral compass may be different than yours, but it is at least _internally consistent_. Even now, I could outsource the task - I could have him _eliminated_ for a low six figure sum I would consider _entirely_ well spent and you would never even know!" He gritted his teeth, and met her eyes. "So I want you to understand that it means something - to me, if not to you - that I am trying to meet you halfway."

She should be exhausted; she should be at her wits' end, beyond the point of dealing with any more strife, and unwilling to accept his terms. And yet what she felt, flowing through her like a pain reliever, like a weight lifted, was _hope_.

"Thank you." She murmured, looking at him in genuine gratitude. "Do you think it will work? Letting him know you could go after his kid?"

"If it were Vladimir alone we were dealing with, no. This entire plan is predicated on the remote chance that his wife is a more reasonable human being than he is, and that she might be able to convince him. It's possible she can. Love can change even the most bellicose of minds."

She expected a pointed look to accompany that remark, but Erik's gaze was grim and distant, as though he were running the probabilities in his head and finding the odds unfavorable.

"Vrioni called you 'Ankh,'" Christine was grasping at straws to lighten the mood, trying to break him out of whatever fatalistic spiral was driving him to distraction. "Is that your real last name? You've always said you didn't have one, but…"

His eyes flicked up to her, tinged with despair.

"'Ankth' is the Albanian word for 'nightmare.'" Erik shifted uncomfortably. "It was a… professional name. In my line of work, there."

He looked at her warily, and she could sense his desperate desire to not have to go into the details.

"Do you want to move on to the next location?" she offered.

"God yes," he breathed in self-deprecating relief, and shot her a look of gratitude before he continued.

"We'll be staying put for a few weeks; best to lay low while dear Vladimir cools off. I'd like to keep an ocean between us until then." He glanced at his watch and scowled. "But, this took longer than I expected and we've just missed the last flight from here to Caracas, so the most comfortable of our options is off the table for the near term."

"Can we fly there tomorrow?"

"I'd like to be in a secure location by then. I have another property in Argentina, and we can still make that flight if we leave now, though we'll need to acquire heavy coats for us both. It's winter in the southern hemisphere."

**XXXXXXXX**

_Panama City to Quito, 640 miles, 2 hours_

There was a surrealness and an intimacy in seeing him asleep.

Erik professed to be an insomniac, and the entirety of the time she had spent in his acquaintance had corroborated that claim; he was always composing at the piano when she went to bed, and preparing tea or even out of the house entirely when she awoke. They'd been on a dozen airplanes together now and she had never once seen him drift off, even on a redeye... and yet here, on a short flight on a regional airline, he was sleeping soundly.

There had been an ease in the worry in his eyes the moment the plane had lifted off the runway, and she could only imagine the fatigue had finally won out - or maybe now that there was nothing to do but wait for Vrioni to respond, he felt it was out of his hands and he could relax.

Even asleep, his posture was stiff, sitting up in his seat, his closed eyes and steady breathing the only signs that he was in slumber, and Christine thought about what little comfort he must have ever had in his life, before raising her eyes to just _look_ at him, in a way she never could while he was awake; he was too prickly about being stared at, quick to assume she was looking at the mask.

With his defenses down and his eyes closed, he was just an exhausted man.

Christine reached into the seat-back pocket to find the thin blue blanket embroidered with the airline's name; she unfolded it and with infinite gentleness, so as not to wake him, pulled it up around his shoulders.

**XXXXXXXX**

_Quito to Lima, 826 miles, 2 hours_

Five minutes, maybe ten; that was all she could spend online on the tablet under the pretense of changing the bandages on her back in the airline lounge's starkly modern restroom. She'd discovered that nearly every airport had open wireless access and she was finding an excuse to slip away and use it at each of them, checking the news or using the fake profile to check in on Raoul and Meg and even Mrs. Giry on the social networking site.

Christine had begun composing a message to Raoul in a text file on the tablet, without being certain of how she would eventually send it - but when the right opportunity came, she needed to be ready, and what she needed to say was too hopelessly difficult to write on the fly.

" _Dear Raoul,_

_I hope someday you will be able to forgive me…"_

It was impossible to write. There was no way to phrase it, no way to put it that didn't sound completely insane, like the decision of a madwoman, and each time she put the words in front of her she found herself questioning every feeling all over again. An email wasn't enough - if only there was some way she could _talk_ to Raoul; to hear his voice, and to figure out what she felt for him, for Erik, and what on Earth she actually wanted for herself…

The airline began calling their flight on the loudspeaker; Christine shoved the tablet back into her purse and dashed out the door before Erik began to worry.

**XXXXXXXX**

_Lima to Buenos Aires, 1960 miles, 5 hours_

When had the hope crept back into his voice, his eyes, his every mannerism? When had she begun to feel actually… _pleased…_ to notice it?

Something changed, after Istanbul, after Panama City. It came in through small moments - sitting, sleepy and relieved on the plane when their final flight pushed back from the gate, lulled to rest by takeoff, swaying forward and catching herself awake - seeing out of the corner of her half-open eyes, that Erik was starting to speak, then stopping; that he was biting his tongue to keep from offering her his shoulder to sleep on. As she turned and leaned against the window, Christine saw a couple in the row ahead of them, the woman's head leaning on the man's shoulder, and for a drowsy second she ached to just give in and do the same.

She felt it after an hour of driving on windy country roads away from Buenos Aires, as they passed through layer after layer of gates and walls surrounding an estate of rolling hills and tangles of Ombú trees, and pulled up in front of the strangest mansion she'd ever seen. In the center, a wall of glass windows rose three stories tall, with curving arches and terracotta walls on the other sides, like someone had taken a modern building and blended it with a country manor and then frosted the end result like a cake - and Erik hastened to mention, with a shudder, that his renovation of the _estancia_ was incomplete. She couldn't help but laugh at his obvious distaste for the previous owners' aesthetics, and she couldn't help but feel a flutter of contentment, seeing the faint smile of satisfaction he gave, when she said she liked it exactly as it was.

True to his plan, they had laid low at the fortified estate for weeks, staying well below anyone's radar - but the house and grounds were large enough that it felt more like a winter retreat than going into hiding. The landscape outside the soaring windows of the house was dusted with frost each morning and Christine kept marveling at the oddness of landing back into winter, just as the Northern Hemisphere had left it.

Erik's concerns over security seemed somewhat abated once they arrived at the estancia, although he was noticeably distressed each time he finished the elaborate procedure of satellite phones and anonymity networks to check his darknet email and found no message from Vrioni. Given the man's obvious rancor during the phone call, it seemed unlikely he would ever respond with the bank account number that would signify his acceptance of the deal, but Erik seemed convinced it was still a possibility.

Still, even with more threats than she'd ever faced in her life looming over both of their heads, day to day life was bizarrely comfortable and content, interesting and enjoyable; this house was large enough to have a grand piano, and it was a delight to spend entire afternoons rehearsing her old opera numbers with Erik, and to spend evenings reading books from the massive marble library in the plush velvet chairs by the fireplace.

Eventually, even without the deal in place, Erik must have grown sufficiently confident in their safety, because they began venturing outside the estancia's walls, for dinners in hidden rooms in grand restaurants in Buenos Aires, and after-hours visits to art museums that seemed to involve significant bribes to the security staff. He even took her to see a symphony performance from an exceptionally secluded box in the massive Teatro Colón. It was originally been built for families in mourning, Erik had said, gesturing at the mesh across the front so they could see out but no one could see in. As the oboe played the A and the string section began the beloved cacophony of tuning before the performance, she settled back into her seat and felt a surge of sympathy, and some sort of affectionate familiarity, at Erik's obvious delight at being able to experience the Orquesta Filarmónica de Buenos Aires in seclusion.

Walking down a street with him in Recoleta, headed home after an evening out, she felt the familiarity with which he took off his jacket and draped it across her shoulders without hesitation, without even asking. He had gone from insisting she bring a heavy jacket wherever she went to saying nothing on the matter - and she wondered if he enjoyed giving her his.

Without comment, he began wearing the cufflinks she had given him each time they went out. The first time she noticed him fiddling with them during dinner, she thought he was adjusting the cuff in his typical fastidiousness, probably wanting the sleeve to lie _just so_ beneath his suit coat - but as it seemed to become a subtle habit for him over the weeks, she wondered if he was compulsively checking to reassure himself he hadn't lost them… or perhaps being reminded of the gift.

One evening she slipped out of the music room to go to the restroom and chose the closest one, instead of walking back to the master suite he had given her within the house. On the counter by the sink, she saw Erik had left a small leather travel bag unzipped, and overwhelmed by curiosity, she peeked inside. A dozen orange prescription bottles were carefully elasticed against its walls, and as she turned one around in her hand, she realized that she would finally learn his last name. But one prescription was for Erik de Meuron, and another for Erik Gehry; the other bottles said Van Alen, Labrouste, Mackintosh, and a half dozen other surnames. Some were useful medicine for any traveler - antibiotics, anti-malarials - whereas a few of the others suggested alarmingly that Erik had quite a fondness for opiates.

But most of the bag's contents were so ordinary that it was almost endearing to imagine someone with Erik's dangerous, captivating presence might still need eye drops and toothpaste. On the counter beside the bag she saw a small, sleek glass bottle with a heavy black lid that was clearly cologne. Christine turned it around, not recognizing the french name of the fragrance, nor the _Editions de Parfums_ label it apparently belonged to. Feeling rather daring, she opened the lid and leaned in to smell what scent on earth could possibly appeal to a man with tastes as exacting as Erik's - and realized, in a rush of familiarity that brought crimson to her cheeks and a race to her pulse, that she already knew exactly what his cologne smelled like.

**XXXXXXXX**

"Better, better," Erik said, pacing around the room, "but you're lowering your larynx _too_ much now. If I wanted that much vibrato I'd have brought Carlotta with me instead."

At that, Christine nearly spit out the sip of tea she had just taken.

He flashed her a quick smile, and she felt a rush of… gladness, it must be, to feel the comfort between them, to see him able to crack a joke that wasn't self-deprecating for once.

"Once again, and make sure you're supporting the tone with your breath," he gestured and she began the song anew, trying to keep his advice in mind. Over a month of daily signing and her voice was in fine shape again, and Erik's hands had mercifully recovered well enough to play the violin. He was even teaching her to play the violin herself, which was as delightful as it was frustrating; she hadn't realized how good it felt to be confident in her mastery of singing until she was squawking through songs on the violin and being reminded of what it felt like to be a beginner.

"Better?" Christine asked teasingly, once she finished the song. "Zero wobble that time." She crossed her arms, daring him to find fault with her work.

"Much improved," he said with a wry fondness. "Shall we stop for lunch? You must be hungry."

"I appreciate you remembering that I need to eat significantly more frequently than you do," she shot him a pointed glance, remembering an early sticking point. "But I'm surprised at how often you're willing to end a lesson lately before complete _perfection_ has been achieved. You used to be so much more strict… I used to have to sing the same song over and over again for hours."

Erik turned and looked over his shoulder, as though there were something very interesting out the window, before finally admitting, "It is possible that I used to draw out our lessons… rather unnecessarily."

Christine stifled the hint of a laugh at his blatantly guilty demeanor. "Seriously? Do you know how many times I went home thinking I was the most remedial soprano in the history of vocal studies?"

He exhaled a chuckle, then shook his head as though surprised at himself. "Part of what I had longed for was just your companionship; to be able to spend the hours of the day in your presence. And…" The visible half of his brow furrowed.

"And?"

"I just realized that I've gotten it."

The fluttering of insecurity was ridiculous, and yet - _to hell with it_. She wanted to know and so she asked, "And it's not what you'd dreamt? Do you realize how much pressure it is on me, to live up to the perfect Christine in your mind? ...Sometimes I worry that you love the idea of me more than the actual person that I am."

Erik tilted his head, aghast. "Make no mistake; spending this much time with you is in every way superior to anything I had imagined. I will always want more - I don't know how to want anything less than _everything_ \- but this - all of this, every moment, every conversation - this is wonderful."

The corner of her mouth tugged into a half smile, and she laid a hand on his shoulder and pressed gently in thanks, before turning to walk towards the kitchen.

**XXXXXXXX**

The more pleasant her days were, the more troubled her nights inevitably became. Erik's presence was so consuming that she was completely distracted around him, her attention consumed with music and conversations and the exploration of a new city - but at night, alone, her thoughts raced in conflicted circles and she would toss and turn for guilty hours, stomach tied in knots, unable to sleep. The sleepless nights began to wear on her, but for some reason she found herself reluctant to tell Erik the reason for her fatigue whenever he inquired about her excessive yawning.

The day was just slipping into dusk, the long hazy purple twilight of winter, as she walked through the house one evening, turning on lights and lighting candles, starting to think about dinner. From the end of the hallway that led to Erik's wing of the house, she could hear the strains of music being played on the piano - then she realized, with a sudden lifting happiness in her chest, that this wasn't the regular repertoire of Prokofiev and Sorabji that he'd been playing lately - it was something she didn't recognize at all.

It was all she could do not to run down the hallway to get a better listen, but she forced herself to walk slowly, lest she interrupt him, and finally arrived at the doorway just as he was playing a particularly beautiful crescendo. The melody was lush and romantic, triumphant and passionate, all the while resting on a foundation of some of the most complex accompaniment she had ever heard, and she stood, mesmerized by the beauty in the movements of his hands as he played, by the energy he was bringing to the song, by the music itself and the man who had made it. He paused at the end of a cadenza to scribble notes furiously on the empty stave before him, engrossed in the music and oblivious to her presence.

"Writing your next Don Juan?" she asked affectionately, leaning against the doorway.

Erik froze with the pencil lifted, and gradually turned to looked over shoulder at her. "No," he said with some reluctance, "Significantly more sentimental than that."

"It's gorgeous - I heard it from down the hall and couldn't stay away... Can I listen as you work?"

"Be my guest," he murmured oddly, shuffling the sheet music in front of him, and gestured toward the sofa across the room.

Christine settled down on the cushions and curled up, pulling the cashmere throw blanket over her feet and leaning her head against her bent arm on the back of the sofa. With a faint smile, he began playing again, somewhat more self consciously than before, although by the time half an hour had elapsed he seemed to have forgotten her presence again and was once more deep within the fervor of composing.

The notes of this new piece were sweeping, glorious, bursting and soaring up out of the piano. Erik looked more content than she'd seen in weeks, and a thought leapt into her head that seemed so natural that it was several seconds before she realized its depth.

… _To hell with whoever said you could only love one person._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **XXXXXXXX**
> 
> **Author's note:**
> 
> **I've had that last line written for *years* - it feels fantastic to get to the point where Christine had the motivation (and the backbone) to think it, and where Erik has shown enough growth that the reader (hopefully) understands where Christine's coming from. I would love to hear what you think! Are the feelings and motivations plausible? Did you like the fluff or did you miss the action?**
> 
> **I hope you all enjoyed this chapter - I thought they deserved a little downtime. This will be as fluffy as it gets for a while - there's quite a bit more anguish/tension/love/lust/drama on the agenda here on out. :-)**
> 
> **As always, the accompanying photos and backdrops are at: veroniqueclaire*tumblr*com**


	16. Chapter 16

Two in the morning. Three. Four.

Pulse racing, head thrumming, eyes wide open and unable to slow down her racing thoughts.

She was engaged to Raoul. Raoul was a good man. Raoul loved her. What she felt for Raoul was definitely love; sweet and kind, warm and comforting, an uncomplicated affection. Love.

_...Then what on earth do you feel for Erik?_

She'd given up on sleep at this point, was sitting up in bed with the blankets wrapped around her and her knees pulled up against her chest. That she cared about Erik was undeniable - her feelings about him had changed in nature so many times, from being enraptured with an angel, to devastated with disappointment by a man, to outraged and afraid of a ghost… but he had always _mattered_ to her, with an intensity and engrossment that had unnerved Raoul, so much so that her poor fiance had asked, once, if it wasn't just a strange form of infatuation…

Christine lowered her head in her hands, at the memory.

The sentiments Erik had inspired had always been ocean waves, enormous swells tossing her about like a ship in a storm - intoxication, euphora, pity, empathy, fear, anger - yet all the while she was unable to ever put any distance between them, feeling the lure to return to Erik's presence even as she spoke words of fury about the Opera Ghost to Raoul or the managers. And in the months they'd spent together since New York, the terror and anger, the aversion and resentment... they had fallen away almost without her noticing, jettisoned like unwanted weight, like unnecessary shields, and what was left…

_Was it love?_

It was becoming less and less possible to pretend she wasn't completely drawn to him, pulled in by the glow of his persona and the intensity of his adoration for her, and increasingly, the stomach-fluttering thrill of watching him respond to any small affection she chose to bestow. Christine could admit that she'd been taking every opportunity to touch him out of concern or care, but if she was honest with herself - and at this hour, she had little other choice - it was as much for her as for him. Maybe more so.

Because if he was hurt, and needed comfort, or wracked with anxiety and needed calming, then she could tell herself it wasn't wrong to touch him, to care for him… that in some perverse moral logic, showing Erik affection wasn't _cheating_ if some dire circumstances brought it about.

_It wouldn't be cheating on Raoul if you had the courage to end the engagement..._

Her heart twisted at the thought, and yet surely it was the right thing to do, the thing she'd been trying for weeks to put into words in an email - she might not be ready to make the decision to spend the rest of her life with Erik, but hadn't she already chosen to stay with him, for months? If she'd been certain of her future with Raoul, wouldn't she have thrown herself upon the mercy of Agent Khan and the power of the De Chagny family's lawyers, and turned herself in by now, swearing she'd been kidnapped the entire time?

What she felt for Erik was so different than what she felt for Raoul - intoxicating, exhilarating, challenging yet transformative, gutwrenching and glorious by turns... _It sounds positively operatic_ , she thought, and stifled a sad little laugh.

_How can something this different also be love?_

And yet she couldn't unthink it, couldn't unrealize it; that obviously it had been, for so long. Love.

When Erik was in the same room, her every sense was consumed, fascinated, distracted... it was as though they suddenly inhabited a universe of only two people. She must have said "hello" and "thank you" to over a hundred other people in the past few months - waiters and town car drivers and shop clerks and the dozens of flight attendants - but it still felt like a private realm, just the two of them, entire and absolute.

She hadn't felt a world this complete since she was seven years old, touring town to town with her father, the surreal non-childhood of being the more responsible and level-headed of the two of them, adoring and idolizing a papa who was as absent-minded as he was caring. Yet for the parallels in happiness, in the extent to which she felt enthralled and content... here, she was the furthest thing from a child. Erik might be handling the travel arrangements, might be all-knowing about moving about through this parallel underworld - but she had no stars-in-the-eyes idolatry about exactly who he was.

And somehow she was still here. Meeting him toe to toe.

Increasingly since their arrival in Buenos Aires, she'd caught herself having strange little daydreams about a long future of this existence together. He would compose, she would sing; they would continue their strange new life, hidden away from the world and engrossed in one another. She would teach him the little Swedish she knew and maybe they would go to Uppsala someday, to see where her father was born, to see the Northern Lights. Perhaps there would be a way for her to perform again, maybe even to record an album in secret - Erik was clever with technology, he could release the tracks on the internet without anyone being able to trace where they'd come from. In a way, they would both be ghosts, together…

And at that thought, so oddly sweet it was painful, Christine fought the urge to cry.

**XXXXXXXX**

The small silver travel clock at her bedside showed 7:00 AM; she must have slept at some point, but her dreams were restless, anxious, as exhausting as being awake, and she woke up with the impression that she had never actually succumed to rest, but hovered in the liminal space at the edge of consciousness, her mind working desperately to try and make sense of her heart. Shivering against the winter chill, she got out of bed, and bundled up in a warm robe and slippers before walking down the cold marble staircase to the lower level, toward the kitchen. Even Erik was likely asleep at this hour, and she walked as quietly as possible, tracing a hand along the wall of the hallway, not turning on any lights. It was forty-five minutes until sunrise, and the faint grey of dawn was beginning to show through the house's large windows.

The door to the sitting room was ajar, with a warm glow of light spilling out, and she nudged it open as she walked by, reaching for the light switch that Erik must have forgotten to turn off when he went to bed - but no, he hadn't at all. He sat in the angular modern chaise lounge wearing yesterday's clothing and a large pair of headphones, with his eyes closed in an expression of rhapsody, the uncovered side of his brow arching in enjoyment at whatever he was listening to, his left hand tapping the armrest in time to music she couldn't hear. The headphones were plugged into what she recognized as a tube amplifier, but this was unlike anything her dad's band had ever been able to afford; it looked like a piece of art from the previous century.

Erik looked so peaceful and happy she was loathe to disturb him, and was about to tiptoe back out of the room, but in that moment he blinked - and then he was taking the headphones off slowly, looking at her with his heart in his eyes.

"Good morning," he murmured fondly, pleasantly surprised, and the thought came to her, unbidden, that she could wake up every day to his glorious voice whispering that from the bed beside her if only — _Christ._

"I was about to make some breakfast," she said, pushing her conflicted thoughts down and somehow finding herself smiling tenderly back at him, even through her own exhaustion. "I didn't sleep well. But you apparently didn't sleep at all. What have you been up all night listening to?" She gestured at the headphones.

"Sennheiser Orpheus. Finest headphones mankind has ever made, with a range of up to 100,000 hertz, far beyond what human ears are capable of hearing. Better sound than the lesser seats at most opera houses. I've owned automobiles that cost less, but these are worth it."

"I meant the _music,_ " she said with a faint grin that got intercepted by her own yawn. "What were you listening to that had you so engrossed?"

"You," he said softly, but what weight in a word. "Always you."

She swallowed, momentarily unnerved by the weight of his gaze on her, by the reminder that she could go to him, right now - choose her future and immerge herself into the vast love he offered, change a man's life through simply being a part of it, by just being herself _..._

"It's a bootleg off the soundboard from your first performance as Elissa," he continued, as the exposed side of his mouth pulled into a wry smile. "I always pull a copy off the microphones the Met uses for the radio broadcasts. Add music piracy to my list of crimes."

His words might have been matter of fact, but his gaze was full of admiration, of adoration - and something else. It wasn't that he looking at her like he was a drowning man and she was a lifeline; it was as though he'd been drowning his entire life, had known nothing but an existence of constantly breathing in water, decades of choking and agony and belief that drowning was all life even was, and she was the first person to show him there was a surface to the ocean; that there was air to breathe above it.

"Your secret's safe with me," she said with a smile that she hoped was less confused than she felt.

**XXXXXXXX**

"I'm afraid it's impossible. Agent Khan and his team will be passively monitoring the Girys' phone calls for _years_."

"I've seen you go through dozens of burner phones and at least one very elaborate computer procedure to make untraceable calls, so clearly, it's possible." Crossing her arms, she looked over at him and softened. "Look… I just would really like to use the phone just once, to call - to call Meg. I miss _her_. I need to talk to _her_."

Christine squinted in the afternoon sunlight, trying to read his reaction as they walked along the frost-covered paths through the estate's overgrown gardens. She bit her lip and hoped her duplicity wasn't immediately apparent.

"My techniques for untraceable communication are adequate for the calls I need to make, but insufficient for the skills of Khan's team - and the instant Meg Giry gets a phone call from you, Khan's team will be on the line, no matter how stale the case is. I'm sorry, genuinely," Erik shook his head in confusion. "Where did this come from? Are you suddenly homesick?"

"No. I just finally thought you might trust me enough to let me make a phone call," she answered honestly. "But that's the problem, isn't it? You don't trust me not to blurt out to Meg where we are."

"No," he said darkly, thrusting both hands into the pockets of his heavy overcoat and looking away from her as they walked. "That's not not the thing that I fear."

**XXXXXXXX**

Erik was withdrawn and pensive for the rest of their chilly stroll, and Christine found herself mulling the same thoughts over and over again; the need to talk to Raoul, the frustration that Erik was controlling her contact with the outside world. Even amid anger and exasperation with him, she kept coming back to the need to know her own heart, and the enormity of what she was facing, if what she felt for Erik was love - _love_. The word itself sent a frisson down her spine, but not an unpleasant one… more like the drop in her stomach as the elevator would descend from his home back in New York, or the feeling of her heart soaring up out of her chest at a particularly beautiful piece of music.

Music always seemed to bring such clarity, such focus to her heart - free from logic and duty and able to simply _feel_. She headed for the music room when they returned to the house, unable to decide if she wanted some space from him or hoped he would follow.

The room itself was at the end of the house's South wing, with large paneled windows on both sides and a full wall of bookshelves at the back, filled with bound books of classic sonatas and preludes, and an exhaustive collection of arias for tenors. A row of leather-bound binders held more modern pieces, each beautifully printed on heavyweight cream paper, a stark contrast from the flimsy grey paper her school music had always been printed on. But after an hour of searching, she had found only piano concertos and vocal solos, nothing that they might sing together, and she wondered if he had been playing from memory every time he'd accompanied her during a music lesson here.

She yawned, still feeling the previous sleepless night, and rolled her tired shoulders, wondering if she could manage a few hours' sleep before dinner. A rap on the doorframe interrupted her thoughts, and she looked over to see Erik standing in the entryway. "Would you mind company?"

"Please," she gestured for him to come in, then returned to scanning the last of the bookshelves before turning over her shoulder again to ask, "do you seriously not have any duets?"

He seemed taken aback, then answered slowly, guardedly, as he sat down facing away from the piano on the bench. "My repertoire changed rather drastically when I met you."

"Of course…" She felt her cheeks redden, and rushed to continue awkwardly. "The new composition you were working on the other day — was it a duet?"

"It might be," he answered hesitantly, before seeming to think better of continuing. "But it's not ready yet... I'm surprised you'd want to sing at all, given our argument earlier. I had imagined you were rather cross with me."

"I'm frustrated." The shrug came naturally. "But it's not so black and white. I can be irritated with you in one aspect of life and perfectly happy in others... and music almost always makes me happy."

"That you're happy with me in any aspect at all is a minor revelation," he murmured with a wrinkle of his forehead, and he seemed lost in thought - then he was sharp, alert, the commanding presence of a teacher once more. "Music it is, then. Trills on scales then pitch glides on high vowels to begin the warm-up -"

He turned to the piano with an energy she couldn't quite place; enthusiastic and a little unsettled, perhaps, and launched into a lesson with more gusto than she'd seen in months, the nervous intensity of their earliest days of singing together in person. Walking to her customary spot at the side of the piano, she caught his eye and smiled, trilling through the warm-up exercise as he played - and found herself unable to break the gaze, a tiny soaring feeling in her chest, singing _to_ him, _for_ him, on even the silliest of warm-up exercises.

A flash of memory brought her back to an early lesson - standing in front of the mirror, singing her heart out, consumed with an impossible infatuation for an incorporeal being, growing ever more convinced of her own insanity and not even caring... But she was a professional, now, a singer in control of her own voice. She could take this feeling and let it drive her technique, not to allow herself to become distracted by it. And so with a smile, she broke eye contact and trained her gaze on the landscape out the window, focused on pulling the energy of her emotions into proper form and execution as Erik directed her through one warm-up exercise after another, and then into one of the more challenging arias she'd begun working on lately. The range of the piece was wide, and significantly lower than she used to be able to sing, but she knew now how to approach it, mixing the lower and middle registers to place the sound correctly.

"That was lovely work," he folded his hands and sat back from the keys once she finished the song. "How did it feel? Any strain on the throat during the lower notes?"

"It felt good. Honestly, I feel like my mid-range is better than ever."

"Your mid-range is…" he pursed his lips together, clearly thinking better of continuing. But then his jaw softened, and he gave the slightest shake of his head, as though he had nothing to gain by holding back. "It's breathtaking."

A pleasant flutter in her stomach; she couldn't help but beam at the praise. "It's the thing I've had to work hardest on; if you can hear the improvement too, I'm glad it's paying off."

"You have no idea." The visible side of his mouth stretched into a half-smile, a brief flash and then he was drumming his fingers atop the keys without actually pressing them, lost in some internal debate for several seconds; when he looked up at her again, any hint of his defenses was gone, and he stared out into the middle distance as he spoke, remembering.

"You know, when you first began signing for me, I was captivated by the heights to which your voice could soar. By the pure, crystalline beauty of your upper register... and that such an exquisite sound could come from someone who was so obviously _sad_.

"The loss of your father… Your grief and loneliness were so barely concealed in all of your interactions, and I found myself feeling… protective of you. Of this delicate girl, consumed by sorrow, yet singing with the brightest, sweetest timbre, floating so lightly up to even the highest notes… I thought I might train you to be a fine soubrette." He exhaled a small, self-deprecating breath of air, scoffing at himself.

"And when I finally let go of the delusion that my interest in you was purely professional, I somehow imagined the deep sorrow at your core might mean you were the one person on this earth who would…understand.

Shaking his head gently, he continued. "And then I actually _met_ you. Came to know you, in our odd fashion. I saw you sing to exhaustion during our lessons and attend rehearsals on meager hours of sleep. You took every critique I gave and returned with perfection the next day, developing a richness and weight in your lower range that I had never imagined. I demanded sacrifices for the sake of your craft and you took them to heart, working on your singing with the dedicated precision of a surgeon and then whole-hearted _abandon_ of an artist.

"Every aspect of your life was crushingly difficult and yet you responded to even the most horrible of your colleagues at the Met with kindness… You stunned me, time and time again. I suddenly found I was training a lyric coloratura who had the talent to sing with any opera company in the world... and rather than wanting to build a cocoon of song to shelter a fragile and unhappy woman, I found myself desperately hoping that my music might momentarily lift your sorrow so you could shine, as you so rightly deserved.

"That's when I knew I was lost. It wasn't your sadness that made me fall in love with you. It was your strength." He looked up at her, as guileless and peaceful as she had ever seen him. "When I hear the beauty you've developed in your voice, _that_ is what I hear."

**XXXXXXXX**

She couldn't stop catching his eye.

Throughout the rest of their lesson, during dinner at a remarkable restaurant in a former cathedral, and now, sitting beside him in their regular secluded box at the symphony; she kept finding herself looking over, appreciating the music even more when she could witness Erik's obvious enjoyment of the orchestra. Each time, he met her gaze with a warmth and affection that sent shivers down her spine; it wasn't the cold glare of possessiveness, or the controlled disaffection she had so often seen him wear as a shield. This was just him, looking at her with love in his eyes, and it was her, returning the look, comfortable in whatever it was she was feeling for him. Staring at the potential for a life-changing, challenging love, and not blinking. By the end of the symphony's performance she found herself yawning and tired, but relaxed and pleased with a lovely evening.

_This could be your life forever._

"Ravel's work with modal melodies was decades ahead of his time," Erik continued as they walked out an unmarked side door of the opera house toward their latest automobile. "All of his contemporaries were following Schoenberg, but Ravel! He only cared about the pursuit of perfection, not pandering to popularity."

"The series has a couple more performances before it closes," she flipped the program over to check the dates. "If our box is available do you want to go see it again?"

" _Our_ box," he said quietly, with the slightest raise of his visible eyebrow, clearly savoring the sound of the phrase.

"Isn't it funny? I've come to think of it that way… Honestly, Erik, I'm surprised at how happy I am - here," she began, genuinely, and rushed to add the last word before saying too much. He came to a halt and she took that moment to slip her gloved hand into the bend of his elbow and pull him gently forward; it was too cold to stop walking.

"Sometimes I find myself wishing we could just stay in Argentina forever," she continued, feeling strangely open. "I think that's why I wanted to talk to - to Meg. To tell her that I missed her, and I was figuring things out here, with you and I… but that I was happy and safe, and she shouldn't worry about me anymore. That's why I was so frustrated with you today."

"Forever," he echoed in a careful whisper. He looked down at her hand, nestled in the crook of his arm atop his black cashmere overcoat, and with a move that was contemplated, deliberate, he slowly lifted his other hand to pat hers once, and then again, infinitely uncertain, the fingertips of his thin black leather gloves faintly grazing the backs of her own gloved hands. "I have something that might make you like Buenos Aires even more. I had thought to wait - but no. No, I want you to have it now."

"A present?" she asked. "My birthday isn't for months; what's the reason?"

"I always think you'll be the death of me. I should thank you for being the life as well."

**XXXXXXXX**

An hour's drive along the coastline to the southeast and they were well outside of town; with the car parked they set off walking along an empty street of old houses and vacant lots, yet lined with ornate wrought-iron lamp posts. Each streetlight cast a warm yellow glow, against the misty-blue winter evening, making the faint dusting of snow glitter at their feet. Christine shivered against the cold and yawned, her earlier fatigue catching up with her - but curiosity propelled her forward at Erik's side. A small three-story building with arched windows and curved lines loomed several blocks ahead, perched on the coastline like an art nouveau jewelry box, and as they approached it she wondered if they would be breaking in to retrieve whatever present he was describing.

But as they approached a side door, Erik withdrew a single key from the interior pocket of his overcoat. "This property came into my possession several weeks ago…"

"Did you _steal_ a building?" she gently teased, amazed at how the premise sounded almost sweet. What happened to the Christine who did everything she was supposed to, the Christine never did anything wrong? How had she come to a place where she could see breaking the law as just another bad habit to joke about?

"Of course not. I bought it." He looked at her, mildly aghast, holding the expression for a full second before gesturing as though he were brushing aside inconsequential details. "With money that I stole."

The laugh was impossible to hold back, and the thunk of adoration in her chest unmistakable, and she was a lost cause, if even _that_ was endearing.

Unlocking the door, Erik swung it inward and stepped inside, removing his overcoat in the faint light from the street and extending his arm to take hers as well. He turned to a series of light switches on the wall, and as each one clicked on she saw slightly more of the dark space inside; a dirty marble floor inlaid with beautiful patterns, the vaulted ceiling two stories above her, a grand stairway leading up to a mezzanine, aging but opulent, and the sign with fading gold letters that said " _Teatro._ "

"Erik!" she looked up at him in excited wonder. "Is this…?"

"This is your opera house now," he said fondly, eyes bright with anticipation of how she would react. "I thought you might like to sing on a stage again. It's a bit dusty, to be certain -"

"It's amazing," she cut him off, excited, rushing forward to explore further, pulling a door open to reveal an intimate auditorium with enormous arched windows overlooking the Rio de la Plata underneath the night sky. Rows of tattered velvet seats lined the floor and the stage was too small for an orchestra pit, but the faded proscenium was grand and and the magnificent arched ceiling held the potential for beautiful acoustics. "Why on earth was it for sale?"

"It's called the Teatro Nuevo Ortega, named for its architect. Built at the beginning of the previous century, but it's been empty since the coup d'état in 1976. This was originally quite a wealthy suburb, but it never recovered from the economic hardships during the military dictatorship the way that central Buenos Aires did. The auditorium itself is tiny compared to the Teatro Colón downtown; with only a few hundred seats for sale, it would take too long for any performing arts venture to recoup the cost of restoring it. So I offered to take it off the current owner's hands. It needs quite a bit of work, and I can't promise that you'll be able to have an audience anytime soon, but -"

"I love it," she proclaimed, astonished, overwhelmed, heart bursting out of her chest. "It's wonderful… _you're_ wonderful… I can't believe you did this for me." She looked down at her own hands, clasped in jubilation in front of her, and the desire to rush forward and embrace him was overpowering, a wave pushing her forward, and surely a hug wouldn't be _cheating_ , surely anyone would understand.

She looked up to meet Erik's eyes, and he was flushed at the praise, as moved in the moment as she was, and for all her glee at such an amazing gift, seeing him this elated was actually the most wonderful thing on earth. Maybe she could never pinpoint how or when it happened, the exact moment in the last few months when her emotions had entwined with his, but now she could hardly see anything other than how much they affected one another. How lucky she was, to witness the look of euphoria in his eyes on an occasion like this. _Was it the first time had ever called him wonderful?_

Moments passed of standing, dumbfounded and delighted, staring into his eyes, with him returning the gaze with tender wonder, and surely his heart was beating in time with hers, now, the connection between them palpable. Erik's chest lifted as he took the deepest of breaths, then said softly, "If I might show you to the stage."

He extended his fingertips in a formal gesture that spoke of careful study, and she saw his chin lift and his shoulders broaden and lower, as though he were nobly preparing himself for her response.

Christine closed the short steps between them, and placed her fingertips atop his.

He only paused for a second - a quick dip and rise of his chest, exhailing the faintest of breaths - and then, visibly emboldened, he was leading her down the aisle of the theater and up the stairs at the side of the stage. A piano that looked possibly even older than the theater itself was tucked off to one side, halfway hidden in the wings, and he took a seat on the creaky piano stool, gesturing that she should stand facing him, just to the right.

Tilting her head, she gave him a questioning smile - but Erik's mood was impossible to read; he tugged at each of his cufflinks, straightening the sleeve under his suit coat, and adjusted the height of the piano stool twice before finally looking up at her. "I hadn't planned to bring you here tonight…" he said, clearly weighing something in his mind. "But I suppose I'm rather glad now that I had the piano tuned."

With the sort of courageous nod in the face of impending doom one might give before jumping out of an airplane, he began to play, and several measures later, to sing.

The first evening in Erik's home, she had heard his voice ring with a sorrow so beautiful that she had wanted to lose herself in its oblivion; to drown in a song with the power to block out the pain of existence. Later, she found the melodies of Don Juan ached and raged with passion denied, an angry playboy flaunting his empty triumph, the notes themselves bordering on combatative.

Tonight, his music was the purest expression of love, of joy, of celebration and partnership and cherishing that she had ever heard. She recognized it immediately - the new piece she had overheard him composing - but the accompaniment he had played earlier was nothing compared to the splendor of the vocals. It had been so long since he had sung to her outright; not a quick demonstration of a technique during a lesson, but singing _for_ her, _to_ her, giving her the gift of the rapture music brought to them both.

His defenses fell away as he sang; armor clattering to the floor, piece by piece, until there was no pretense that he was anything other than a man desperately in love, singing words of adoration straight from his soul. The desire to move forward and touch him was stronger than ever before. And yet to hear his gorgeous voice singing a song he had obviously composed just for her… it was an experience so perfect that tears threatened at the corners of her eyes, at the hopelessness of her situation, at the impossibility of exploring her feelings for Erik without betraying Raoul; at feeling so strongly for a man who was still so maddeningly controlling.

Lost in thought, she returned to the present moment just as Erik stood from the piano, and sang the final measures without accompaniment, and walking towards her with the glow of a man who thinks his dreams might come true.

Her heart began to pound.

Erik stood before her, the final notes of his song still ringing in her ears, and an unfamiliar expression of hope shining in his eyes.

"Marry me," he said beautifully, forcefully, confidently, intoxicated on love and song and oh, god, no - it was too soon, too much. She couldn't be certain yet - and yet she couldn't tell him no again, to crush this man she held so dear... Her heartbeat thundered in her ears and she swayed slightly, unable to speak.

"These months have been the happiest of my life," he continued, his eyes raking over her face, trying intently to read her reaction, "And to hear, tonight, that you are happy as well? I couldn't wait another second to ask you."

She swallowed, and felt paralysed, unable to find the words, wanting almost to simply fall into his arms, but unwilling to do so beneath the spectre of guilt and betrayal.

"Choose me. We are _right_ together," and it was unclear, now, whether he was convincing himself or her. "I would be such a good husband to you... And you - you would make me so happy. You cannot imagine, Christine, how different my life has been with you in it - a part of it, as you said."

She felt her expression melt into a sympathetic wince, remembering her words and the confidence they must have given him.

"We would not have to be married immediately," His anxiety was visibly rising, and with it, his defenses. "It could be quite a long engagement…"

Tears gathered in the corners of her eyes. The tips of her fingers tingled, her limbs numb.

"Dammit, Christine, say something." His arms crossed, his shoulders stiffened.

An eternity passed in silence, and Erik's eyes eventually narrowed. "Would you like me to beg?" he spat out darkly.

"Oh, Erik," she found her voice, the words thick in her mouth. Her eyes focused on his, trying to meet Erik's desperate gaze with tenderness. "I have feelings for you; I know it, undeniably. But I _can't_ -"

His roar of anguish cut her off and he whirled around, walking angrily away from her. "It's not enough!"

"Erik, please, let me finish," she strode after him.

"I don't need to hear any more of your _platitudes_." He raised both hands to his head, and then threw them both down angrily, not looking back at her.

"Would you listen?" She was approaching with gentleness, with compassion, but he was having none of it, visibly spiraling into an emotional black hole.

"I don't know how I ever imagined - but no. I have always known. You would never choose me, but you prefer a life on the run with a platonic companion to taking your odds with De Chagny's plan. How useful it must be to have a guide who's devoted to you like a _dog_!" he hissed, vicious and venomous and walking so quickly she nearly needed to run to keep up. "How deliberately you must calculate your behavior toward the _freak_ to maintain your position. I've just decided recently that it's entirely insufficient. Your _insipid_ affections - your _ersatz_ camaraderie - it's not enough!"

"Is that what you actually think?" She couldn't tell if she was more baffled or horrified, at the depth of malice he so quickly imagined. "Did you not hear what I just said? I _genuinely_ have feelings for you."

"Pity for the monster. Sympathy at arm's length for a beast, never seeing me as a man. Why would anyone try to actually _love_ someone with a face like mine?"

"How goddamn _shallow_ do you think I am?" And she was furious now, stomping up the theater's aisle to catch him by the shoulder. "I care about you, not what you look like. Can you really not see that?"

He spun around and stared her down, voice seething. "Do you think I didn't know? That your attempts at deception weren't laughably transparent? Even today, you were trying to contact that handsome _fool_! I don't know why I let myself be so swayed by your words at the symphony tonight. Lies! All of them."

She clapped a hand over her face, ashamed and angry and frustrated beyond belief. All of the tenderness, the affection she felt, being twisted through the kaleidoscope of his warped world. "Please," she began, "try to see this from my point of view. We are so connected, you and I, and the force you are in my life is so enormous I'm only beginning to understand. But I'm _engaged_. To start something with you, now… it's not fair to Raoul."

" _Fuck_ 'fair'," he snapped sharply, disdainfully, the word hanging in the air a moment, unexpected in his lexicon and shocking her in the intensity of tone. "Do you think anything you did to me back in New York was fair? I gave you a career, lifted you from obscurity, presented you with a love that rendered me powerless - and you fell into the lap of the first vapid patron who paid you any attention."

Indignance flooded her veins. "You _stalked_ me! You terrorized the opera house! What kind of girl runs to the ghost who's just killed a stagehand and not to the man who promises to keep her safe? I had someone I'd known forever that I trusted; someone kind who wanted me to be happy. Raoul's not a bad guy!"

He faltered, for a moment, and looked back at her with heartbroken eyes. "Do you think that makes this _better_? Do you think I don't know that? Even if I could believe you were genuinely… considering me as a suitor, that you truly wanted to speak to him to say goodbye. I know the moment you heard his voice, it would be over for me. You would remember his beautiful face, his uncomplicated life, and I would lose you forever. I should have killed him when I had the chance, but at this point I know damn well that my only option is to keep you apart perpetually."

"That's awful," her eyes were wide with horror. "Seriously? Would you even _want_ a Christine who was only yours so long as you kept her distracted?"

"I'll take what I can bloody well get." He sneered, his posture hardening again.

"Obviously not, because that implies compromise." She fumed. "Not exactly your strong suit."

"When you're as repulsive as I am, existence itself is a compromise."

"God," she cradled her head in her hands, exhausted. "Have you ever considered how... how incredibly _arrogant_ it is, to believe that you're genuinely the ugliest man on earth? That everything that happens is happening to you, because of how you look? Your attitude is ninety percent of your problem."

"I skipped high school, Christine, what other aspects of guidance counseling did I miss? Is it all in my outlook? Should I chin up and make lemonade?"

"I know!" she exclaimed in exasperation. "I know everything you've known has created this... this warped worldview, that makes you think the worst of everyone, even me. But what you've known is not normal. People aren't as bad as you think, and you're only making it worse by believing they are. It makes me so sad, Erik, because I'm worried that at this point you couldn't even change if you tried; I think it's easier for you to understand the world this way. But it is _exhausting_ for me. You want me to be the solution to an unfathomably large problem that you keep perpetuating yourself."

"I'm sorry my offer of marriage is so _fatiguing_ ," his acerbic tone did little to hide the pain in his eyes. How could she be so furious with him, yet want nothing more than to hold him close?

"People don't just _get married_ ," she sighed, relenting a little. "They date. They take things slowly. And I can't do that while I still have a fiance, and you won't let me talk to him so I can figure out my feelings. And even then, even if I were a single woman right now, I can't share anything with you without committing to _everything_ ; do you realize how impossible that is?"

"You already have two men who love you. Are you holding out for someone better to come along? I pity anyone else who would be afflicted with the particular agony of loving you."

"Ugh!" she threw her hands down. "Don't you see? This! This right here is the actual problem. I don't think you even mean the things you say, but they are _awful_! Every time you lose your temper, every time you seethe with contempt, I think there is a good man, a kind man, an easy-going and stable man who absolutely adores me. What kind of _masochist_ am I to still be here?"

Erik was ranting on and she was furious, soaring high on self-righteous indignation, and it felt so perversely good to just let her feelings out, to stop tiptoeing and speak her mind, the catharsis of being honest. Erik was maddening, he was absolutely impossible, and clearly she was insane for putting up with his temper, his melodrama, the swoops and dips of his mercurial moods and she was standing her ground, standing there yelling at him with her face inches from his - her lips, inches from his - and the desire surged in her, suddenly, to lean forward, to close the small distance between them and silence the hell out of his tirade with her lips on his -

"...because I _love_ you!" He threw his hands up in the air.

"So _what_?" She took a step back and crossed her arms before she could act on that last thought, head buzzing at the idea. "You act like your feelings for me are my responsibility, that somehow I _owe_ you something just because I make your heart beat faster. Actual love is treating the other person the way they'd like to be treated, because you care about them more than yourself."

"How can you imagine that a love without music is the right one for you?" he growled, changing the subject, but it was clear; her words had struck close to home.

"How can you imagine that what you want matters more than what I want for myself?" She shook her head. "Erik… I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm saying it's _my choice_."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **...Sorry, dear readers, to break that nice run of fluff with all that angst, but Christine and Erik have a bit more growth to do before they stand a chance of being happy. :-)**
> 
> **You all amaze me - you left more reviews on the last chapter than the last few combined, and it totally motivated me to put aside other projects and finish chapter 16 in record breaking time. Thank you! Your insights make this a better story, and I'm so honored to have the kind of readers who see the humanity and dimensions I'm trying to put into these characters.**
> 
> **I am desperately curious to know what you all think of this most recent chapter - I have been trying so hard to slowly build a Christine with the backbone and gumption to meet Erik toe to toe, because I think the only way this can work is if they're something approaching equals. An interesting aspect of taking so long to write this story is that in a sense, I've grown up as I've written it, and come to value things like boundaries and emotional strength. In Leroux Christine is very independent and strong, and I've tried to write some of that mettle into a modern Christine who has had it up to *here* with Erik's behavior. I think it's entirely possible to love someone and be completely tired of their bullshit (and honestly, sometimes the more you love someone, the more frustrating their self-defeating habits are.) I would love hear what you think!**
> 
> **The accompanying images are, as ever, at veroniqueclaire*tumblr*com**
> 
> **P.S. This chapter owes massive thanks to Tumblr user fdelopera, whose posts on Christine's voice type were incredibly beneficial to my descriptions in this chapter.**
> 
> **P.P.S. Thank you so much to the Albanian reader who wrote an interesting and useful review. It doesn't look like you have an account, so I can't message you back, but your review made my day! I'm absolutely honored to have readers from all over the world, and I'm glad to hear my research on Albanian geography and a little of the language was accurate. I created Vrioni because I wanted Erik to have an unexpected adversary in Istanbul with whom he would have previously done business in the area, and Tirana was a city within the appropriate range for the kind of person wealthy enough to take a helicopter flight just for dinner. (The "Sultana" character referred to in Leroux and Kay and to whom I alluded in ch 13 was too far away, at 1200 miles to Tehran.)**


	17. Chapter 17

Twisted in the passenger seat, the seat belt cutting across her awkwardly, Christine sat staring bleakly out the window, heartbroken and discouraged, fuming and wounded, silently vowing that he would be the first one to speak. Erik drove mechanically, saying nothing, but the silent car rang with the insults they had hurled at one another.

Forty minutes of winding roads and city lights growing ever more distant, and then the car was gradually rolling to a stop. Erik rolled down the window to enter the first of the key codes and biometric authentications to enter the estancia's series of gates and fortified walls, and the sudden blast of cold air was startling. Christine shivered and instinctively twisted the diamond ring she'd been wearing since this journey began; it always felt too loose when her hands were cold, and for a bitter moment she wondered what would happen if she lost the damn thing and the coded email address it contained.

Eventually they passed through the last of the security gates and Erik pulled the car into the curved driveway before the house. She stepped out as soon as the car was stopped, her high heels scratching angrily against the gravel driveway as she walked away, cold and controlled, utterly _done_ with all of it.

"Wait, Christine — I'm… I am sorry," he stood up out of the car, awkwardly trying the words.

"You always are," she paused, and looked back at him. "And I never deserve any of it." She rubbed her eyes. "I am so tired. I couldn't sleep last night. I haven't been sleeping well for weeks. I can't cope with any of this right now."

He tilted his head in concern. "You should have told me."

"I'm at the end of my rope. I can't deal with any more misinterpretations or accusations tonight. Goodnight."

She crossed her arms and marched toward the house, Erik trailing behind her in a silence she could only imagine was bewildered. He caught up to her at the door and began the sequence of steps to disable the security systems.

"I've been an insomniac for as long as I remember," he began quietly, looking at the keypad as he entered the codes. "If you would like some… assistance, with that problem, I have several prescriptions that might be of use."

"Ok," she found herself saying coldly. "Fine. I'll take the strongest one you've got."

His eyes flicked up to meet hers, pained. "Are you so eager to escape this night?"

"I'm eager to get some sleep," Christine muttered as he opened the door, and followed him down the hallway toward the wing of the house she'd come to think of as his. He flicked the light on in the mirrorless bathroom and began rummaging about in his leather travel case, and in the glow from the sconce she could see a quiet despair in his eyes, so much so that she softened, somewhat. Empathy felt like a curse, tonight, robbing her of the self-righteous power of her anger... as she imagined how much he must have hoped, must have felt. How disappointed and rejected he must have been. How quickly he had retreated to anger, insinuations, lashing out.

She leaned her head against the door frame in utter exhaustion with his behavior, and still loved him.

Christine closed her eyes. This was masochism, surely, this must be some broken part of her personality, that she was seriously contemplating the choice between these two men as though it weren't an obvious decision, that she could still love someone who could act so awful...

But she did. And maybe it was twisted and wrong, but it was undeniable. She loved a man who was impossible; who had never heard the meaning of "too much, too soon", who demanded all or nothing — but no, actually, Erik just demanded _all_. She must love him, to still be here. To still want him to be better. To still believe that maybe he could be. Maybe she was delusional.

_If you read the draft of the email to Raoul now, in the darkest hour, would it sound like a terrible decision?_

Erik was going over the details of the sleeping pill prescription in the background, rattling off precautions and side effects and other details and then turning to the sink to fill a glass of water for her. "You'll want to head directly upstairs to your room; you'll likely be sound asleep within fifteen minutes."

The desire to re-read the letter she'd composed on the tablet was pressing, and 15 minutes wasn't nearly enough time; in a snap decision she palmed the pill he gave to her and mimed popping it into her mouth, then took a long drink of water, slipping the pill into her pocket. She could take it later; another hour of sleep deprivation wouldn't make a difference at this point.

Christine said a terse thanks and headed upstairs, changing into the warmest of her sleep clothes and retrieving the tablet from where she'd been hiding it in her lingerie drawer. The battery was getting low - she'd need to find an occasion to stealthily borrow one of Erik's cell phone chargers at some point soon - but with no internet access, she could leave it in flight mode and it would probably last another day or two. The draft was saved in the notes application, and she opened it once she turned off the lamp and got under the covers, reading again the words she had struggled so much to write.

Even now, it didn't sound insane.

It wasn't full of self-justification or any obvious red flags of co-dependence; she didn't sound unhealthy or broken. It read like the words of a woman contemplating something difficult, and sorry she was hurting someone else in the process. Choosing a challenging love. She let that thought linger, and wondered if her feelings for Erik were almost the greater of the two loves, for having been able to take root and blossom even with every odd stacked against it...

A gentle tap came at the door, and she jumped, almost knocking the tablet off the bed and catching it just in time. She shoved it under her pillow and was about to respond when she looked at the clock. It had been nearly an hour since she'd headed to bed.

"Pardon the intrusion; are you still awake?" Erik's voice came from outside the door.

She wasn't supposed to be.

Christine swallowed and her mind raced through options. Tell him she hadn't taken the sleeping pill, and come up with a quick lie to explain why. Pretend it hadn't kicked in yet, and see what he'd come back for. Pretend to be asleep, and -

She was still debating the options, when she heard the door open and the light switched on; the sound of his footsteps approached her. She clamped her eyelids shut and her heart skittered nervously, feeling the tablet concealed beneath her pillow.

"I wouldn't have imagined so," he said in an odd tone and she could feel her cheeks redden, since he'd clearly seen through her act. The sharp tap and slide of his shoes' leather soles stopped near the head of her bed and the floor creaked amid other scuffing noises for a minute. _Fine_. _Fess up._

Christine opened her eyes, prepared for a glaring gaze to be meeting hers - but Erik was sitting, sprawled against the wall, one knee bent with his elbow resting on it and his forehead on the back of his hand. His jacket was askance, and the top two buttons of his shirt were undone, but not as much as he was. If his eyes were even open, he was staring at the floor.

The hand across his brow was just a few feet from hers; she could almost reach out and touch him. To squeeze his hand in comfort... or to slip her own beneath the open placket of his shirt and feel the beating of his heart. The desire to do so came, seemingly, from nowhere - she was angry with him, _so angry_ , still - but before she could contend with it, he shook his head and seemed to straighten up, and she quickly shut her eyes again.

"There's no point in this," he said, his words dark but his tone helpless. "If telling you something in your sleep would affect your subconscious, I would have convinced you to marry me back in New York."

She concentrated on keeping her breathing slow and steady, deep in sleep instead of fraught with conflicted emotions.

"I don't even know what I'm hoping, anymore. That you'll wake up and feel differently one day? I would have to believe in a god to believe in miracles - and that particular bridge is rather well burnt."

The hollowness in his voice seemed to reverberate in her ears, carrying the ache of his emotions down to her very soul. He began again, scathingly, "As though putting another month between you and that boy would somehow be the last of our obstacles."

Erik said nothing more for several minutes, and she could hear his breath gradually grow less steady. His fingers drummed out an arpeggio on the floor, the five individual taps becoming faster and faster and faster until there was barely a silence between each one and he was just frustratedly hitting his fingertips against the ground... and then there was a loud smack, the noise of the open palm of his hand against the floor, followed by silence.

And then he began again, his voice low, exhausted, but startling in its vehemence. "I don't know how to make you love me. And somehow I have done everything wrong. But I can't take any of it back and I can't exactly walk away from this plan, now that I've had a taste of life with you by my side - even in this ridiculous pantomime of domestic bliss we've been living... I suppose you never thought you'd be playing house with a killer!"

She expected him to laugh bitterly, but there was only a gaping, somber, silence.

"This is pathetic. And I know damn well it's not particularly fair of me to pin a lifetime's worth of my god-awful hopes on you. The devil himself must know I didn't consciously choose to fall in love with you... but the real hell is that I could not have chosen someone more perfect. More wonderful than I could have imagined. It is _terrible_ , Christine - terrible! - to think so highly of another human being. It is debilitating and disheartening... because it is so much easier to anticipate living the rest of your wasteland of a life in isolation, when you don't believe happiness exists."

Erik's tone was dark, despondent, and she could hear him take a few deep breaths, before he went on.

"I know it's too much to ask of you - you had such a good and normal life lined up, a future of singing quite modestly and marrying quite well. But I..." his voice cracked harshly, and she winced, thinking of the abuse to his vocal cords. "I fell in love - love! - with you. And I know what that is, now, to _love_ someone... to be humbled at the beauty of your soul, to see bliss painfully and quite _literally_ within reach of my arms…

His breath hitched. "You have no idea what it's like to have… desires… you must conceal. To be driven to distraction, electrified by the most casual touch, re-living each moment like a drug to indulge in, desperately hoping they all add up to something more. To feel for the first time in your life a _passion_ so bright and so powerful it could inspire symphonies, masterpieces, the most glorious emotion you have ever known! ...And to know you must _bury_ it, because the purest, most beautiful thing you have ever felt is _repulsive_ to the very woman you feel it for."

"Do you think I _want_ to be like this? Ugly... a _ngry_ …" his voice shattered. "Do you think I feel _good_ when I'm hurling insults at the one person on earth who has ever treated me well? I want to be a better man and I know damn well I never can be, because a better man would stop this charade and let you go. But I am selfish, and I am _desperate_ , and I no longer even have an endgame because that idiot boy ruined everything and my own enemies just made it worse. You're here with me because you _have_ to be; you'll never want to be with me out of love...

" _Love_ ," he scoffed cruelly. "I thought you might be able to love a monster with a bloodstained past. But I had this love for you, and I dared to _hope_ -"

The shame and rejection in his tone melted her anger, her frustration, her heart. If she was breathing slowly now, it was from being stunned; her emotions around Erik were so forceful and his despair so moving that what could have seemed like a monologue in self-pity only struck her as a desperate man baring his soul. How much she wanted to comfort him now... yet how embarrassed he would be to realize she hadn't been sleeping at all. Her thoughts were racing in all directions and finding no course of action, and then fizzling, fading, into a silence that seemed to stretch out, and perhaps she would just doze off, with him nearby. Deep in fatigue, Christine contemplated the intimacy of falling asleep with him sprawled on the floor beside her.

"And now my dear, if you don't mind, I'm going to go into the next room and see if I can't numb this hell out of my brain." She heard the scrape of his heel against the wall and his footsteps echoed definitively away from her, across the floor, and then they halted. Christine fought the desire to sit up; to whirl around to see why he'd paused, willing her breath to remain calm and constant, keeping up the illusion rather than face the awkwardness of admitting her fakery.

Cringing, she felt her eyes squint even more tightly shut in shame, and then immediately tried to relax her face, lest the wince reveal all. She heard Erik take a deep breath and without trying to she held her own, waiting for him to call out her fraud, wondering why she had ever been pretending to sleep - but he just exhaled, frustrated and hopeless.

"Goodnight, angel," he said, before tapping off the light and closing the door behind him.

**XXXXXXXX**

She was wrong, about having been exhausted in the car.

She'd been wrong, actually, about every prior instance of her life when she'd ever thought she was truly fatigued. Every limb-aching ballet rehearsal, every textbook-laden midnight subway trip home from Bobst Library; how could any of them compare to four continents of jetlag and the emotional equivalent of mutual checkmate?

It was so dangerous, to be his happiness. To be everything - the only thing - that someone desired, it felt volatile, flammable with a blood temperature flash point, because all she would have to do was relent, for one tiny moment - to give in for just a minute and let herself be loved, sink into his need and fulfill it, be the bride, the companion, the savior. He would be happy - and she would have committed herself, forever, because there was no halfway with him, no way to just _date_ , to just care about one another and see if the relationship would work long-term, like any other man…

When had he become a man to her?

That first night in his home, the angelic voice in corporeal form at last, she had known he was just a human being, for a brief moment - and then in the unmasked aftermath of the next morning he had become a specter again. No longer a spirit, a disembodied presence - but a shadow haunting her days, an ominous presence looming in the background of her mind, even when he wasn't physically stalking the rafters above the stage, seething fury and unleashing horror. The malefic figure of Red Death storming down the stairs at the masquerade ball wasn't a person with feelings, a man who might grow.

She'd been infatuated with the clearly masculine presence of her angel, and now she loved a very flawed man; when had he changed, from the phantom to _Erik_?

**XXXXXXXX**

_Manhattan._

_Five months earlier..._

"I'm sorry - I can't!" Christine choked through the words, and ran out of the managers' office before Raoul's gentle logic or the managers' increasing pressure could convince her otherwise, stomach in a knot, panic rising and fleeing, running away from her lack of any say in any of this, from the terrible things they were asking her to do, from the man she loved asking her to betray the teacher who had once lifted her soul from despair.

There was no one she could go to, no one who would understand - because how on earth could she possibly say it out loud - and she sang numbly in rehearsal as the rest of the cast struggled with the atonal chord progression and Piangi tripped over the syllables of the lyrics. Carlotta was glaring at her - as though the ability to sing a whole tone scale was itself a sign of conspiracy with the ghost - but all she felt was a misery that was paralyzed with grief and frantic by turns.

Dazed, she slipped away from rehearsal early, ignoring Meg worriedly mouthing "call me!" and moving toward the cloakroom to find her heavy blue coat with the fur cuffs before heading out into the freezing January weather. The wind barreled down 62nd street and she wrapped her scarf tighter, realizing she'd left without her hat or gloves but feeling too upset to go back for them and risk running into anyone again. All around her people were walking to restaurants, bars, dinner plans with friends, heading out of the office after an average day of work. People who weren't pawns in FBI stings and at the mercy of the Met's managers. People who had families to go home to.

"My family can be yours too," Raoul always said. "I'm here for you, always." And he _was_ , but it was never the same.

One foot in front of the other and she found herself in the subway station at Columbus Circle, boarding the first train that arrived and not the one she would normally take to get home, not knowing where she would end up and too consumed with grief and anxiety to even care.

Station after station went by; passengers came and went. Robotically, numbly, she transferred from the A train to the G at Hoyt-Schermerhorn and it was only several stops later that she realized that she knew exactly where she was going: Green-Wood Cemetery. Her father's grave.

Christine leaned her head against the window and let the tears run down her face; no shaking sobs, no effort to stop them, just a river of sorrow and misery at everything she had lost. Everything she was losing, right now

The gates of the cemetery loomed ominously when she approached, but they were open; she walked in, first along the main road and then following the path she had once walked on a daily basis. It was even colder now, and the icy wind came in gusts down the rows between the mausoleums; she was beginning to shiver uncontrollably, but her mood was so dire she couldn't bring herself to care.

What a terrible, frigid resting place for anyone, but especially for someone like her Papa... She remembered sitting in his lap as a kid, his beard brushing the top of her head as he read her Swedish stories, translating into English as he read from his own childhood books, and her ribcage sunk inward as though she'd been punched, as a new wave of tears overcame her.

Her father's grave was small, a tiny headstone in a field of fancy statues and crypts but she found it easily, even in the dark, the wan light from the streetlights back along the path not reaching quite this far.

"Hey Dad," she began softly, and the tragedy of standing in the dark speaking to the buried body of the person who had been her entire world overcame her before she could speak any more. Wrapping her arms around herself as her shoulders shook with sobs, tucking her head against her collarbone and letting the tears soak her jacket.

"I miss you," she choked out. "God, I just miss you. I've done nothing but miss you for the last 6 years. I don't think it's what you would want for me and I don't know how to do anything else. I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know what I've ever done.

"I have to be stronger. I don't know how. You always said my voice wouldn't grow until I sang songs beyond my ability, until I was in over my head. I am in over my head with my _entire_ _life_ and I only feel like I'm drowning. You taught me to love music. You taught me how to be kind. I wish you could teach me how to live without you!" Her chest heaved, each wave of sorrow battering her as it broke.

"I love you. I miss you. And I know have to get through this on my own..." A long silence followed, as her words trailed off, and each sob that followed was carried off on a gust of wind. She shook her head. "I'll find a way... I'll be stronger. It's my only choice. I love you."

She sniffed, and shivered again, tucking her hands under her jacket to stay warm, taking a deep breath and writing the moment to her memory, cementing her resolve before she turned to leave.

The sound of a footstep cracking across the icy ground startled her and she looked up.

"Poor girl. Have the idiots and their schemes driven you to this? To such misery that you would come here, just to be alone?"

And oh, _god_ , in that moment her heart leapt out of her chest, the anguish of grief allayed by the shock, the comfort, of _him_ , Erik, standing before her with compassion in his eyes.

"I don't even know who you are, anymore," she said dazedly, wiping away tears with the back of her hand.

"Your teacher. Your confidant. _Yours_ ," he breathed, "Surely you remember."

She did. The warmth of his home, hidden away from the world. The delirious reverie of his tenor, and the power it had over her, moving through time in a gorgeous haze, hours spent with their voices reaching for the heavens. Every logical part of her brain was screaming that he was a murderer, that he had killed Joseph Buquet and threatened all manner of terror against the Met… and yet her heart just wanted to go to him. To give in to his love for her, be free of the plotting against the Opera Ghost, to cease the torment of life without _him_...

"You must be freezing," he crooned, removing his overcoat and taking a step toward her, not a ghost, not a criminal, but a man in love, a man whose seductive certainty was just a veneer over desperate _hope_. "Come here. My car is parked just outside the gates. You can come _home_."

Erik held the coat out and she didn't want to sink into the warm cashmere, she wanted to sink into his arms, his love, his sadness as great as her own, his certainty and his power, the utter relief of him being in control. "Yes," she looked up at him. "I've missed my angel. I've been so lost…"

"That can all be over. Come with me," he intoned, low, hypnotic, gorgeous, and she didn't even feel the cold anymore, walking toward him, confidence glittering in his eyes, the white mask almost glowing in the moonlight, power radiating off him in waves, drawing her closer. "It will all go away."

There was only a few feet between them now; four more steps and he would wrap the jacket around her, surround her in warmth, she would lay her head on his shoulder and everything would disappear, warm and secure, free from everything everyone was demanding. All she had to do was whatever he asked, and it would all go away, and that didn't seem such a high price; her entire self, in exchange for the safe cocoon of Erik's control, in exchange for _peace_...

"Stay the hell away from her!"

Her head jerked up, and she trembled, the cold suddenly cutting to her core. Raoul was there, at the crest of the hill, running toward them. Raoul, her _fiance_...

**XXXXXXXX**

_Buenos Aires_

_Present day._

Christine rolled over and smashed her face into the pillow - the fatigue was so fierce that her very bones seemed to hurt, and the thought of escaping her thoughts for a while was suddenly enormously appealing. A ten hour dose of unconsciousness was waiting, small and round and white, the pill still concealed in the pocket of her jacket in the closet; sleep could be hers if she wanted it that badly.

The sheets were smooth - some obscene thread count - and she moved her legs across them, seeking out the cool spots. But the drop into unconsciousness didn't come, and she couldn't stop her mind from circling back to the same conclusions

They had come so _far_.

As maddening and insulting as his behavior had been earlier that evening, as much as it was completely unacceptable for him to fly into a rage at her, as much as she still felt entirely convinced of the indignity of the situation... this was a personality conflict between adults. This was what Meg would call "shit he damn well better work on," she thought, with a sad laugh. Christine wasn't wilting like a scolded child every time Erik flew off the handle anymore, wasn't feeling responsible for his feelings when the conclusions he jumped to were unreasonable.

This wasn't a broken woman sacrificing her free will in exchange for the safe oblivion offered by a controlling man.

This was Erik, desperate for her love, and her being strong enough to tell him what he needed to change for her to choose him.

Twenty minutes. Twenty more. Same thoughts.

...She could tell him she cared. And, now that the heat of the argument was over, she could explain what she'd been trying to tell him back at the Teatro before he'd lost control of his temper. _It would make him so happy…_ and even through her frustration, that thought brought a little lift to her chest. If he insisted on all or nothing, she could hold the line - she didn't have to agree to marry him, she could tell him she had feelings for him and keep taking it slow, and try to not be overwhelmed by his desire for more.

It probably wasn't the best time, now, at 3am - and it certainly would be awkward to admit she'd been pretending to be asleep - but now was the moment she had, and she was standing up, shouldering on the silk-liked cashmere robe, bundling it around her, and walking out of her bedroom, headed into the main hallway before she could change her mind.

Faint amber light from a dim lamp near the grand stairwell illuminated the estancia's longest hallway, and Christine walked slowly toward it and headed downstairs, careful not to trip in the near-dark. She rounded the corner into the other wing of the house and began to check the rooms, one by one. Usually Erik was awake at this hour, reading or composing, but the music room and the library were both empty.

Finally she paused outside the double doors at the end of the hall that led to his bedroom. If he were truly asleep perhaps she should just let him enjoy the rare moments of rest… but Erik was such a light sleeper, it was odd for him not to have already heard her coming downstairs. A worry crept in, at the back of her mind - but no, perhaps he had just gone out, perhaps he had headphones on and couldn't hear her, it was probably nothing.

She knocked, gently, on the door.

No answer.

Something felt odd, out of place, and her mind raced through several further possibilities before she finally just reached for the door and opened it, saying softly, "Erik?"

But there was no response from the recesses of the dark room, and finally she reached out and palmed the wall until she found the flat button of the light switch.

Christine blinked a few times as the lights surged on, and quickly pushed the narrow bar on the side a few more times until they dimmed to the lowest setting. She turned around, and found Erik not in bed but on a nearby divan, lying on his side, looking straight at her. The right side of his face was obscured, pressed against the taut leather surface of the sofa, but she could tell - he wasn't wearing a mask. "Sorry to wake you..." she finally said.

His regard didn't falter, or even change, as she spoke; he just stared at her with a sort of dazed adoration. On the dark wooden side table sat an amber glass bottle, a syringe, and piece of rubber tubing perfectly coiled, like a labyrinth whose minotaur would be inevitably found.

"Erik?" she said, anxiety entering her voice. "Are you ok?

"Sophidone is eight times stronger than morphine," he said calmly. "...And apparently several thousand times better."

She breathed relief as he spoke, and marveled at his ability to sound pleasantly surprised and cynical at once. Rushing forward she stooped down, turning her head sideways to match his unwavering horizontal gaze, trying to make contact - surely he could read her emotions in her eyes, even if she couldn't coalesce them into words.

"Hey..." she said, soft and comforting, creeping her hand forward hesitantly to rest near his where it lay on the sofa. "I'm sorry to burst in; I was scared something had happened to you... God, Erik, what have you taken?"

"A sufficiently strong dose of Hydromorphone to block out this evening's disaster from my brain, and apparently replace it with a significantly better scenario." His eyes closed.

"Oh _Erik_ ," she said, compassion and sorrow filling her voice. "That scares me. That sounds like a dangerous habit." He didn't seem to register what she was saying, and a sense of urgency filled her, to speak her heart while he could still hear her. "I know you're probably... passing out, here, but I came here to tell you that... that I care about you. That I'm here with you and not back in New York because I want to be. I heard you, earlier, and it just broke my heart…. And I couldn't let you go on thinking that way. I'm not going to say I'm completely over our fight, and I'm not ready for forever, but I care about you too much to let you suffer."

"Of course you do." His eyes slowly opened and he smiled gently, condescending as though he were talking to someone very young, taking her right hand with ease and placing it over his heart as he shifted on the couch and settled onto his back, bringing his face into full view - and she bit her tongue to keep from gasping, the muscles in her own face quivering as she tried not to wince.

"You're immune to the effects of the pharmaceutical industry's most effective sleeping aid. You've..." and here he gestured, not his normal fluid swoops of a conductor, but more like a director describing a scene. "You've had a change of heart and you're here to shower me with affection. It might as well be my bloody birthday. This is marvelous."

His words slipped out, not slurred so much as glossed over, light and insubstantial.

"Erik!" she said, impassioned, "Look, I'm sorry - I didn't take the sleeping pill - but it's me, for real. It's Christine."

"This would be a far less... pleasant... hallucination if it were anyone else," he murmured dismissively, closing his eyes again and tracing her hand on his chest with cool fingertips, reverent but unhesitant, unlike she'd ever seen him before. "You feel like heaven. Or as close as I'll ever get. Wonderful..."

"I don't think painkillers make you see things..." she finally said helplessly. "Why won't you believe that it's me?"

"Eightteen months of empirical evidence," came his reply, the words wry but the tone unhostile. "Don't worry... tomorrow I'll weep like a fool, at the things I make do with... shameful... but this is perfect, right now... My Christine, unafraid of seeing a face such as this..." His voice came out more slowly as his breathing grew deeper, and Christine didn't know if she should shake him by the shoulders or just let him... go to sleep? Pass out?

"It's not your face I'm afraid of, Erik," she said, softly. He would probably never remember this, but she wanted to tell the truth. "It's the things you do when you're angry. You've killed people…"

"Ah…" he said slowly, "Bit too much realism. Nevermind… come here, darling... lean in close and tell me you love me."

"I do," the words came out, before she could even think about the right answer.

"Oh, _Christine_!" he exhaled so deeply it seemed to come from his soul, and his eyes flickered open, surprise and delight. "Christine…" he breathed her name again with adoration and an odd emphasis, a focused concentration as though he were pretending very hard that this was indeed Christine speaking - and her heart wrenched. Erik said nothing further and she could see tears gathered in the glazed corners of his eyes, shortly before they closed again and he fell silent. She quickly pressed the fingers of her free hand against the underside of his wrist and felt, with relief, the pulse there, lethargic but steady.

A few moments of silence passed, as she tried to contemplate what to do and the ramifications of each option, logically, like a chess game - but looking at his hand on top of hers, she just - she just _felt_. The jolt in her soul, the rightness of touching him... and she felt a dizzying sense of liberty, to just behave naturally around him, without the consequences being a concern, for once.

Hesitantly, she raised her left hand, and brought it near his unmasked cheek, and she wished she could stop her arm from trembling, wished she knew whether it was reluctance to touch a face so deformed or just fear of his reaction that made her shake, but she closed the final inch and cupped his cheek in her hand.

He didn't move. His breath came slowly, steadily, and she figured he must be fully unconscious, in an opiate haze by now, if he was letting her touch his face.

It wasn't terrible.

The flesh was ruined, mangled; under her thumb it was dry and ridged; in some places the skin was so thin she was worried she was touching bone, and in others she could faintly feel his pulse from the veins that mottled the surface. His face was unattractive - it was awful. But it didn't repulse her anymore. This was the face of the man who loved her, who made her happier than she'd ever been. Could she deal with that?

She was exhausted. And he thought she was a narcotic hallucination.

Something unknotted in her, the anxiety that made her arms tense until the point of trembling seemed to seep out, drain from her limbs, and slowly, bonelessly, she leaned forward, until her head rested where her right hand had been on his chest. It was like laying her cheek on the rigid torso of a marble statue - he was so slim, and the muscles stretched over his ribcage felt hard and defensive. It was not a welcoming surface, but she collapsed on his chest, closing her eyes and trying to simply breathe, trying to forget about her conflicted feelings and worries. Christine counted to three as she breathed in, and to three again as she breathed out, trying to match her breath to his steady, sedated rhythm.

She felt safe and loved, and for the first time in her life, a sense that everything in the universe was _right_.

The pressure was faint at first - just a brush along her back, fingertips trailing along her shoulder blade, pausing, then gently tracing up her spine. A pleasant shiver traveled down her body as she felt his hand reach her neck, stroking for a second before coming to cup the back of her head, fingers weaving in and out of her hair, holding her to him with a soft touch, but an unyielding presence. The hand cradling her head was gentle, but the arm holding it there was like steel welded in place. Even less than half-conscious, he still treated her as treasured.

"Oh..." he whispered, with great effort, "I... I never dreamt... " his voice trailed off, and no more words came, but his chest trembled, and the ache in his tone seemed to have filled the room. She squeezed her eyes shut, wincing at the wonder in his voice, hating that he was so shocked to be shown affection.

Even kneeling on the ground, leaning her head on his chest on the divan, she was more comfortable and at peace than she'd felt in years, and tears gathered in her eyes. They could just be like this. Loving one another, flaws and all, hurt feelings and broken trust healing and breaking and healing again, less hurt every time, stronger all the while. Making the home neither one of them had ever had, in one another's arms.

"I'm sorry I couldn't say yes, tonight," she murmured into his chest, knowing he wasn't particularly conscious and wanting to say it anyway. "But I was closer than I've ever been."

Five minutes passed, and then fifteen, and then she wasn't sure how long beyond that. Her neck was beginning to twinge from the odd angle and her knees were already aching. She shifted slightly, trying to find another way she could rest her head at and eventually just sat up. Erik's arm fell as she moved, dead weight dangling over the edge of the couch, and she instinctively reached for his hand in both of hers, lifting it to lie across his slowly rising and falling chest. Impulsively she leaned forward and stroked her hand down his cheek one more time, then stood up, quickly, and turned to walk out of the room before she did anything so irrevocable as lying down again beside him on the narrow edge of the divan to be there in his arms when he woke.

Back in her own room Christine turned on the light and saw the clock by her bedside read 5 AM. She opened the closet and found the coat she'd been wearing earlier and the sleeping pill, still concealed in the pocket; with a swallow and a gulp of water she climbed into bed and found rest at last.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Author's Note: ...You guys wanted fluff. There was cuddling, kind of! Did I do it right? ;-)**
> 
> **Seriously though, sorry for putting them both through the emotional wringer, but with a situation this complex the only way out is through. (And** **I always say if a story doesn't give you a good gutwrench of emotion, what's the point? Life is too short for lukewarm.)**
> 
> **You, dear readers, are amazing - this last chapter got more reviews than many of the early chapters combined, and I was floored each time a new review came in, reading the witty, interesting, and occasionally hilarious insights you all had. I worked like mad to finish this chapter in under a month as my personal way of thanks to all of you who wrote reviews.**
> 
> **This chapter is dedicated to Midasgirl, who beta-read an early draft of it *years* ago and gave me some invaluable feedback.**
> 
> **Images, as always, at veroniqueclaire*tumblr*com**
> 
> **P.S. I suspect some will be uncomfortable with Erik's drug use here, but having known more than one tempestuous genius, I think Kay hit the nail on the head when she surmised he would have an addictive personality. The failed proposal was the perfect set of circumstances for him to want to use; pain, shame, helplessness - someone with an tendency toward drugs would look for the fastest escape from awful feelings. (And in case it needs to be said, I've seen people implode their lives with opiates. Kids: Erik is in no way a role model. Put that chandelier down right now.)**


	18. Chapter 18

"Wake up. Pack your suitcase. We're going…"

"...What?" Christine struggled to open her eyes, fighting against what felt like an impossibly large weight dragging her eyelids down. "I'm not really… awake... yet."

"We're leaving now," Erik was striding across the room to the window; he threw the draperies open, flooding the room with early morning light. "I can't look at this house for another minute."

"Erik…" she yawned, and tried to lift her head, then let it fall back against the pillow. "I don't understand... Sorry… I'm just so tired."

From her sideways view of the world she could see his entire posture was tense, guarded, angry, _ashamed_ …

"There's nothing you particularly need to comprehend," he said, shoulders stiff and defensive, not turning toward her as he spoke. "I woke this morning and found the house was full of memories I suddenly couldn't stand. I'm not going to discuss this any further. Get dressed. Our flight leaves in two hours."

**XXXXXXXX**

_Buenos Aires to Caracas: 3180 miles, 7 hours_

_Caracas to Grenada: 364 miles, 1 hour_

_Grenada to [redacted]: 20 miles, 45 minutes_

It was dusk when she finally woke up, gradually blinking awake in a room with mosquito netting draped over her bed in a canopy, the mesh gently swaying in the breeze of a fan turning lazily overhead. Above it was a timbered ceiling, painted a clean white, like the room's walls and most of the decor, save the dark frames at the windows and the polished concrete floors. Outside the window, she could barely make out palm fronds in the faint remainder of the day's light.

Christine vaguely remembered trudging into this bed the moment they'd gotten off the water taxi to whatever island this was, after twelve groggy hours of travel. Erik had been brooding and bristled easily all day, looking at her with a scarcely concealed embarrassment, clearly thinking he knew something of which she was completely unaware. She had been drowsy and withdrawn, the lasting effects of taking a sleeping pill just as the sun was starting to rise. Twice, Erik had expressed concern that the sleeping pill's effects should have been over by then, yet when the moment came to tell him she hadn't taken it until much, much later, she had faltered, uncertain how to even begin to explain the magnitude of what had actually occurred between them.

She yawned, and tried to push through the foggy aftermath of the medicine; her mind was a bit fuzzy, but at least she'd finally gotten some sleep, and she felt a calm that was almost pleasant; the catharsis of a weight lifted, like the empty lightness after crying or the satisfied exhaustion after a first performance.

Brushing the mosquito netting to one side, she found a small silver ice bucket sitting on the side table, with a bottle of juice resting in it. Mango nectar was a novelty and she drank it gratefully. The ice in the bucket was mostly slushy water, and the polished vessel itself was beaded with condensation; if Erik left this for her, it must have been quite a while ago.

For the first time in months, she was warm. Not like thawing her fingers by the fire in Buenos Aires, not bundled up in cashmere blankets aboard a plane, not even the searing onslaught of heated air she would feel each time she stepped out of the New York winter and into the comfort of Raoul's condominium tower. But _warm_ , down to her bones, comfortable and then some - she didn't need a mirror to know she was radiating contentment, warmth, peace... and something heady. Confidence. Daring. Freedom.

Whatever tightrope she had drawn for herself to walk these past few months - whatever invisible moral threshold she had convinced herself might exist - they were all irrevocably crossed the moment she had told Erik she loved him, whether or not he knew it was real. Time to stop pretending there was some arbitrary line she could keep from crossing and still be a good and faithful fiance. If she was damned, she had damned herself thoroughly last night. _Might as well be damned some more._

She pulled off the cotton poplin pajama pants and soft knit tank she'd slept in, and slipped on a sundress she had a vague memory of buying earlier that day in the airport. Barefoot, she glided out of her room, through a living room with a piano whose presence seemed like a remarkable luxury to ship to an island — but Erik was rarely one to scale back a desire in the name of pragmatism. He was nowhere to be found in the house, but just outside on the patio she could see a candle, flickering in the glass hurricane lantern.

Christine ventured outside, out into air that was was warm and thick, as though the breeze itself was a velvet curtain being drawn across the island, palm fronds shimmying against one another in its wake. The wind was up and purple-grey clouds were heavy on the horizon, a tropical storm approaching as the day's light faded. The yellow candle glowed bright and warm against the cool pastel dusk, and she could just barely make out a path leading over the ridge of the hill, through the thick snarl of palm trees and vines surrounding the house.

She wanted to find Erik, and she was so damn tired of not doing what she wanted to do.

And so she stepped off the polished white wood of the porch onto the sandy path and made her way through the tropical brush, dress billowing behind her with each surge of wind, the packed sand of the trail smooth beneath her toes; at the crest of the hill she could see another hurricane lantern, and further down the trail there were more. Several minutes of walking and she could hear the ocean, then realized she'd actually been hearing it the entire time, somehow just below the level of active perception. There were waves crashing on a beach, and the sounds of an island at night — crickets, and, strange birds, and somewhere, not too far away, windchimes, fluttering frantically in the swelling wind.

The last hurricane lantern was at the edge of the thicket of palms, where the short stretch of white sand began and ended, thirty feet away, in the ocean, and with it she found Erik, sitting in a black adirondack chair, staring at the waves. He wore a tan linen suit, the single button undone at the top of his crisp white shirt the only acknowledgement of the climate's heat; a cut-crystal tumbler with a single, enormous ice cube and a small measure of some dark liquor rested in his hand.

It was balmy, even as the day sank into evening, and the rising breeze lifted the hair off the back of her neck.

Erik took a sip from his glass, his gaze still trained on the ocean. "One of those wind chimes is a millimeter and a half too long, and is completely discordant with the rest. It's hung well above reach in that palm tree. It's driving me mad."

"What are you drinking?"

"Demerara Rum. When in Rome..." He looked over at her and shrugged his visible eyebrow.

"May I?" she gestured at his glass and his eyes flickered wide for the briefest of seconds, before he gestured, with exceeding nonchalance that she was welcome, and lifted the glass in offering. She took it and lifted the heavy crystal tumbler to her nose and inhaled, trying to seem casual and focusing on the scent - a sweetness, like caramel, but something sharper as well, almost like cedar - but his eyes were on her rapt, as she took a sip from his glass and returned it, and the intimacy of the small act was not lost on her. She hadn't had to think about it; it was just what she had wanted to do.

"1995 Samaroli Demerara Rum. From Guyana, before the distilleries closed; it's almost more historical record than beverage." he said, as though he were filling the silence before he could say something else himself.

"You say that like you were there."

"I had a... contract engagement during one of their border disputes with Suriname. The nature of some of the forms of employment I've held means I've 'worked' just about everywhere for a week or two at a time. But not anymore." His eyes met hers, wounded and wary, and she wondered if the final sentence was a promise, an offering.

She wanted to touch him again — no, actually, she wanted to climb into his lap right now, straddle him on that chair and watch him fall to pieces in her arms. She wanted to kiss him, _finally_ , wanton and reckless and getting what she damn well wanted, come hell or consequences later, because she was so tired of trying to do the right thing, the responsible thing, the thing she was supposed to want to do, the good and upstanding desires of the woman she was _supposed_ to want to be. Here, with the waves crashing against the beach and the palm trees rustling overhead, she was a million miles away from her life, and she felt a sense of freedom that was new, life-changing, intoxicating.

...But unlike Erik, she understood the concept of too much, too soon — and as far as he knew, they had argued viciously and barely spoken since. _Take it slow. Baby steps_.

"May I?" she asked for the second time that night, gesturing at the place on the sand near his feet

"At some point you're going to realize that you may do anything, as far as I'm concerned," he said - hoarse, low and cutting straight to the core. "You hold all the cards here, Christine."

She put her hands on her hips, and resisted the urge to call his bluff.

On her silence, he continued, "Why do you ask? You know this."

"You're hard to predict. I hugged you once, and you bolted." She shook her head, remembering touching his face as he slept, and how furious he might be now if he knew. "…I just need to feel like anything I do is something you actually want."

" _Tell me_ a lack of apparent desire on my part has never been the problem," he snarled.

She didn't blink.

"Let's watch the storm roll in," Christine said, with calm authority, and closed the few steps between them to sit at the foot of his chair, stretching her legs out on the sand and resting her back against the chair's wooden leg. She leaned her head to the right, until it was resting against his knee and noted, with satisfaction, that while he initially flinched away, he then quickly brought it back again, inviting her touch, and for a while there was no sound but the ever-growing warm wind, and the waves breaking on the shore and receding.

"I don't understand," he began defensively. She tilted her head back to look at him, and out of the corner of her eye she could see the glass balanced on the arm of the chair and his hands, folded, clenching one another so hard that his knuckles turned white. "I don't understand why you're here right now. Sitting with me, as though nothing were wrong. You were so angry with me last night."

What could she say? _Yes, I was, but then I faked being asleep and heard your pour your soul out._ Or better yet, _Yes, but_ _it's hard to stay mad when you've finally rested in someone's embrace and experienced the thing your soul was missing._ And the latter was an overwhelming idea she was still grappling with _._

Instead she shrugged gently, and turned back to look out at the water, not trusting herself to make eye contact, but putting kindness into her tone. "If I don't choose compassion over stubbornness, I can't expect you to do the same."

"I'll confess to still being rather confounded," he said guardedly.

"Last night…" she shook her head, and felt a sudden desire to be at least somewhat honest. "You didn't even let me finish, at the theater. I tried to say I couldn't marry you _yet_."

"... _Yet_." He said the word with such weight and wonder that the syllable itself was a new universe unfolding, a revelation, an exaltation. The single large ice cube rattled against the edge of the glass, betraying the trembling hand that held it, and he quickly set the drink down on the ground.

"Yet." She repeated, turning to look up at him, to drink in the wonder in his eyes, feeling her own heartbeat quicken. "I need to… figure some things out. I'm not stalling for time anymore; I'm using it, to work through my feelings. But the answer definitely isn't 'no.'" With that, she reached up to squeeze his hands, then taking his left hand in her own, guided it to rest on her shoulder, their fingers entwined. Slowly, cautiously, his fingertips brushed over her bare shoulder, and then again; the smallest caress in the history of the world and yet it was a monument. Curled up at his feet, feeling the warmth radiating from the sand, she imagined it must have been the first time he'd looked at the ocean holding hands with anyone.

Erik began to hum in a low tone, his voice so melodic and powerful that it overwrote the offkey wind chimes in the distance, making its own beauty in the moment, making a symphony out of the wind rustling through the jungle, the palm fronts scraping against one another and the waves crashing before them.

"This is really nice," she murmured, and picked up the crystal tumbler from where it rested in the sand, took a sip of his rum and pressed the wet glass to her forehead, enjoying the cool amidst the tropical heat.

"I'm sorry," he said abruptly, "This is torture."

He stood and strode off toward the house, and Christine clapped a hand over her brow. _Utterly impossible, completely unpredictable._ She pulled her knees up and draped her arms over them, and after a long moment of frustration, she decided to take the liberty of finishing the rest of his drink. She was contemplating exactly where she might have gone wrong when he re-appeared on the horizon, holding a three-quarters full bottle of rum and a rifle. Her heart leapt in a moment of panic at what attacker he might be warding off — had Vrioni or Agent Kahn found them, here? - but Erik was gesturing nonchalantly.

"Don't get up," he said plainly, leaning over to wedge the bottle of rum in the sand beside her. "This will just take a moment."

He aimed the rifle up at one of the trees with intent concentration, his shoulders rigid and stance wide, an eminently _professional_ posture — and pulled the trigger once. A single silver tube of metal fell out of the sky and landed a few meters away. The off-key note from the wind chimes, attached to a cord he had apparently just severed with a bullet..

"It sounds better as an open fifth," he said flippantly, on her questioning gaze.

"Of course you keep a gun around to solve problems like these," she said wryly.

"This one's hardly even mine. Came with the house when I bought the island. I hope weaponry isn't a problem… it's a good thing you haven't looked too closely in the cabinets of most of my residences."

"Erik!" she rolled her eyes in mild exasperation, "I thought maybe you just owned the house here. You _bought_ an island?"

"I'm not the kind of man who rents things." Scathing - but she saw the twitch of a smile in the exposed corner of his mouth.

"Fine," she tried and failed to resist smiling herself. "Let me try again. You bought an _island"_

"The word you're looking for is 'profligate.'" His shoulders broadened with pride.

"Did you really embezzle that much from the Met's managers? Or was it all from Vrioni?"

"Neither. I drained Vrioni out of spite and the managers out of boredom. Monetary theft is hardly necessary nowadays," he said, as though he were talking about something rather gauche, casually unloading the rest of the bullets from the rifle, checking the chamber, and putting the safety on before setting it on the ground. "Once you have the first twenty million or so in a state where you can legitimately put it to work, the absurdities of the market make it quite easy to ensure exponential growth from there. Even if stock shortings and other rather morally bankrupt practices hadn't been perfectly legal avenues to pursue, simple compound interest means that even with something as painfully dull as an index fund earning 8.5%, one's money doubles every 9 years."

Christine stifled a laugh at the idea of one of the FBI's most wanted terrorists lecturing her on financial planning. On her aborted giggle he frowned, but she didn't feel like explaining and waved it away. His flippant tone was evidence that his armor was up again, and she wanted it gone.

"Sit with me," she said, patting the place beside her in the sand.

Across the spans of the universe, across this world and others beyond, the moment that followed was filled with the cataclysmic events that occur every second of the day; stars exploded into supernovae, asteroids collided with planets, lives began and ended and began again. Here, on a tiny island that didn't even have a name as far as she knew, Erik looked at her as though he were contemplating an act of no smaller significance, standing silent for the longest minute of her life, before eventually raising his left hand to unbutton his suit coat, and sitting down on her right.

His posture was stiff, and he mimicked her pose, drawing his knees up; he was clearly uncomfortable, resting his hands atop his kneecaps and looking like an actor in a play who hadn't been given a script. Then, he appeared to remember the bottle of rum, because he was twisting to his right to find it and refill the glass, seemingly relieved to have something to do with his hands. He took a heavy swig from the glass and stared at the ocean, tense and controlled.

She plucked the tumbler from his hand, took a strong sip herself, and looked up at him, seeing his eyes soften as he watched her drink from his glass and then twist it in the sand at their feet. A thrill ran through her, low and heady, the knowledge of the power she held, the effect she had on him, the effect his reactions had on her. The most dangerous man she'd ever met, and the touch of her hand could make him melt - and right now she was craving the rush that it brought. It was absurd, it was perilous, it was downright glorious, and all she wanted was more.

She leaned her head against his shoulder, and slipped her right hand under his arm, to rest atop his hand closest to her.

His entire body tensed, and she felt the hand beneath hers quiver slightly; slowly, she pried his fingers free of the death grip he had on his knee, and slipped her hand into his. " _Christine_ ," he sighed gratifyingly, his breath heavy in her ear, equal parts surprise and desire. Tentatively, she felt the fingers of the hand she held curl around her own, and some minutes later gently stroke across the back of her hand with increasing confidence. She realized he was holding his breath just as he let it out in a long, shuddering exhale.

"Please - _please_ ," he groaned, his voice sonnant, gorgeous, rich and rumbling, the sexiest thing she had ever heard, and suddenly he was pulling away and turning to look at her with desperate eyes. "I was wrong. I'll beg, god dammit. I'm beyond pride. Love me - please, I'm begging you Christine."

 _What do you think I'm doing?_ Her mind cried out, but she wasn't ready to say it out loud. Christine caught his hand again, and held it in both her own this time. "Let me take it slow," she said, gently caressing his hand, hoping touch would calm him when words could not, hoping he could read in her eyes how close she was to telling him - but his own gaze was frantic.

"I care about you," she ventured shyly, feeling her heart thud in her chest as the anxiety in his eyes faded to something closer to awe, using every bit of her willpower to keep from saying more. "But you ask for so much and I can't give it to you yet. I'd like to sit here with you. That's the speed I'm at, right now. Take it or leave -"

" _Take_ ," he blurted out in a rush, eyes intense and cutting off the end of her sentence, then swallowed, before beginning again with a dry voice. "...I'll take it."

She smiled, warm and satisfied. "Good," she murmured, and threw caution to the wind, pulling his hand toward her and ducking to lean under his elbow, wrapping his arm around her shoulder. Erik let out a pleasant gasp of shock that edged into almost a growl of contentment, and his breath was shallow now, shaky. Christine slid closer to him, leaning the side of her head against his collarbone.

"I've committed regicide on multiple occasions," he said slowly, confused, not a confession so much as a recitation of familiar facts. "The assassinations I've orchestrated have toppled billion dollar corporations. I have had men who commanded armies beg me for mercy... And I am rendered powerless by a woman not even five and a half feet tall."

She squeezed his hand, and looked out at the ocean. The waves on the beach were crashing larger, the lavender line of the horizon blurred such that she could barely make out where the sea ended and the ever-approaching storm clouds began. The improved wind chimes jangled in the breeze, spinning ever more intensely in the swells of air gusting toward them.

"I need you to get a handle on your temper," she said, calm but firm. "This is never going to work if you're blowing up about nothing and I'm furious that you're being unreasonable."

With her head resting against him, she could feel the rise and fall as he took the deepest of breaths before speaking. "You think that… this… might _work._ "

Slowly, she curled even closer toward him, laying her cheek against his chest, and resting her left hand on his shin. "I've been hoping it could for a while, now."

"Turning down my proposal was an odd way of showing it," he bristled. "I don't know how to believe you, here, now, none of this makes any sense to me -" She felt him start to pull away from her.

" _Erik_ ," and she lifted her head to turn and look up at him, unyielding. "Stop. Take what I say at face value. This won't work until you trust me, either." Before he could respond, she laid her head back against his chest, her knees nestled against his, and his arm fell limply around her again, his nascent tirade silenced.

"The Caribbean is the last place I ever imagined we'd wind up," she began casually, hoping to steer him back to calmer topics. "You don't seem like the snorkeling type."

He took a moment to find his breath, before answering, "I've found one doesn't need to enjoy a region's more ridiculous activities to appreciate its scenery... And I certainly appreciate its solitude. Tax laws are rarely enforced, banking has a respectable degree of privacy, and extradition treaties are lenient; I originally planned to stay here long term, but the humidity is hell on my voice."

"No," she shook her head slightly. "That's not it. Being an outsider is how you've defined yourself. You need people around so you can twist the knife of exactly what you think you'll never have."

"...Is that so? You seem rather confident in your assessment of my character defects."

"I am. And I like you anyway."

There was a pause, a tiny gasp as his breath caught, and she could only imagine his heart was beating as quickly as hers now; she squeezed his shin, beneath her left hand, and leaned closer to nuzzle against his neck, breathing in the scent of his cologne. He exhaled, all the contentment in the world, and slowly, tentatively, leaned the unmasked side of his face against the crown of her head, braced to see if she would pull away. Christine slipped her right arm around his waist, and the walls of his nervousness seemed to melt, his posture softening, the rigid tension of his muscles relaxing, the weight of the strong arm around her back suddenly present, steady and wonderful. She let out a sigh of pleasure, of peace.

"...the _death_ of me," he murmured tenderly, and she couldn't help but smile.

The dusk had faded to the full dark of evening, made all the darker by the brooding clouds, the only light now coming from the candles in hurricane lanterns on the trail behind them, and the waves continued to break and fizzle on the beach in the dark. Idly, she stroked her fingers across his kneecap and then his leg, absent-mindedly feeling the crisp texture of the linen trousers beneath her fingertips.

"Ah, now that's an entirely different kind of torture. Below the knee, please," he said in a slightly strangled tone, catching her hand in his and firmly placing it further away from his lap.

Christine thought she probably ought to be blushing, but all she felt was amused. She closed her eyes and smiled against his chest, and felt the crescendo of wind as the storm finally reached the shore and the first raindrops began land on them.

Neither one moved to get up.

And so they sat, curled up together on the sand, the heavy tropical rain drenching them both, and Christine thought about how strange it was, to have to journeyed so far from her life, from everything she knew, to finally feel a sense of _home_.

**XXXXXXXX**

She stepped gingerly along the path, struggling to make out the way back to the house in the dark, the candles all extinguished in the ongoing downpour. Erik walked several paces ahead of her, pushing palm fronds out of the way for them and looking back every few moments, as though he thought she might vanish, and deep down she wondered if he was reassuring himself she wasn't another supposed hallucination.

_Wouldn't it be a relief to just tell him the truth?_

The rain was falling in huge sheets of water now, drumming down down on the trees and plants in the palm thicket, the sound of the raindrops surrounding them like hundreds of thousands of tiny percussion instruments. Christine stepped over a fallen branch and marveled at the warmth of the tropics, to be drenched through and through and not to feel cold at all. To feel quite warm, she thought, watching Erik walk ahead of her, holding the half-empty bottle of rum in one hand.

Sitting with his arm around her had been tender, wonderful, affectionate - and it seemed to have done little to sate the part of her that had woken up hungry to touch him and feeling temporarily distanced from her own conscience, her own desire to do right by Raoul. It was still there, if she thought about it, but at hte moment, she desperately didn't want to. Desire thrummed in her head, fueled in no small part by the rum they had shared, and she wanted to see Erik melt again, wanted to feel the gasp and soar in her own chest at the awe in his eyes, the hitch in his breath, his mellifluous tenor brought low and aching, all for her. How happy she could make him; how happy that thought made her…

_Wouldn't it be marvelous to be the kind of person who just takes what she wants, without ever thinking about the aftermath? Liberated from worrying about everyone else's feelings?_

_...Wouldn't it just be nicer to be able to enjoy yourself without hurting either man in the process?_

She wiped the wet strands of hair from her face and resisted the urge to growl in frustration.

The house came into view as they crested the next hill on the path, the few lights she'd left on glowing bright against the night sky, a beacon in the rain. Erik turned toward her as they approached, the light glinting off his mask, and she took his hand before he could even offer it to her; holding the skirt of her drenched sundress in the other hand, she climbed the stairs to the terrace and followed him in through the french doors to the living room.

The absurdity of the two of them standing there, soaking wet in their clothes and dripping a small lake onto the floor made her almost giggle - but she saw as Erik shifted uneasily from side to side, that he was suddenly feeling shy, and she had a moment of sympathy for how far beyond his depth the entire evening had likely been.

"Why don't you play something for me?" she gestured toward the room where she had seen the piano earlier, and smiled, warm and easy.

"Yes, that would be… nice," he said hesitantly. "Give me a moment to change."

"Are you worried about the cost of replacing a water-damaged piano bench?" Raising an eyebrow, she tried to lighten the mood. "Come on. What if we didn't worry about anything for a while? I'm having a really nice night. Let's just go sing."

Christine plucked the bottle of rum from his hand and sauntered off toward the music room, humming to herself, smiling with pleasure when she heard Erik begin to follow.

**XXXXXXXX**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Author's note: I got some feedback on the last chapter that apparently gut-wrenching angst and twisting the emotional knife didn't count as "fluff", so I gave it another attempt. Any better? :-) I can promise it's not happily ever after from here (flying off into the sunset is so dull.) There's quite a lot of unfinished business, to say nothing of all the unresolved tension between the two of them. Chapter 19 is shaping up to be a rather sultry clash of wills as the tropical storm rages on outside.**
> 
> **Thank you all so much for your amazing reviews - Chapter 17 got more reviews than any previous chapter, and the insights you all had into the story are so sharp. I might be biased but I really do think Volée's readers are some of the most smart and perceptive readers in the phandom, and I am learning so much from reading your brilliant, heart-felt and well-thought-out reviews. I love and appreciate all of them - even if all you have time to write is "squee", I guarantee it'll make my day to hear it. You have all made this a better story through your insights and feedback, and I'm in your debt; as a way of showing my thanks, I worked to get this chapter finished in under a month!**
> 
> **It's amazing to finally get to this chapter, because it was during a rather intense storm in St Barts and the following day of many flights to get home that I first thought up Volée - it was such an AU setting I didn't know if I'd ever be able to get them onto an island, even once I got the airplane idea to a workable story concept. Hat tip to the tumblr crowd for giving me the nudge to do it. This is also quite a bit of character development for both of them (what with Christine being all "Want. Take. Have." and Erik learning to meet Christine halfway and being quite content.) - I would love to hear your take, and if the story so far has supported them getting to this point.**
> 
> **Finally, this chapter is dedicated to Jennyfair, whose writing I admire enormously - and who reminded me in a recent review that there is little on earth sexier than a powerful man saying "please." :-)**


	19. Chapter 19

Patience.

_Patience_ was the last thing on earth she wanted, soaring high on an hour of actually touching him, of holding her ground yet holding Erik's hand in her own - and finding that the world did not end even if she was a traitorously bad fiance to Raoul. The storm had brought no shortage of lightning, yet none of it had smote her on the walk back to the house and maybe in some cosmic sense that meant the universe understood what a difficult situation she was in, and looked upon her with sympathy.

...Rum logic was of dubious value.

Sitting at the grand piano, she made her way through the notes on the sheet music, trying and failing and getting marginally better with each attempt. Erik had muttered something about needing to close the windows against the storm - and if he needed a moment to gather himself, and a transparent excuse to justify it, she would be patient. Give him time, like she had asked him to give her. And tonight, in the meantime, she would sit here and do her best to distract herself by attempting the song she had chosen for him to play. The piece was so complex that sight reading the left hand alone was difficult, and she was grateful Steinhardt's vocal program had made her take a few semesters of piano as well.

Erik's footsteps hesitantly approached the music room, each creak of the floorboards barely audible over the surges and torrents of raindrops drumming on the rooftop and windows, and when the sound of his steps paused at the doorway she looked up. He looked almost… nervous, and was rushing to cover it with manners and mannerisms, as he unbuttoned his rain-drenched linen blazer with one hand and gracefully shrugged out of it, only to hold the offending garment at arm's length out to one side and let it drop unceremoniously onto the floor with a sodden thunk. Christine missed a note and stifled a grin; the puddled tan jacket was in stark contrast with the clean lines of rest of the room. _Leave it to Erik to invent minimalist Caribbean interior design_

Shaking her head and turning back to the sheet music, she began the measure again, trying to focus on matching the notes on the page to the position of her fingers on the keys, but feeling her heartbeat quicken as he approached the piano. She missed several more notes in rapid succession, and stopped playing entirely.

"What a stern music teacher I must be, to unnerve you so," he said gently, setting the bottle of rum on the top of the piano and leaning against the instrument itself. "I promise not to critique your playing if you'd like to continue."

"I might be a bit distracted," she admitted, looking up at him and raising an eyebrow. "But that's not really the same as intimidated... It definitely doesn't feel _bad_."

The moment hung between them, his gaze locked on her own, and she tried to give him a smile that was heartfelt and maybe even a little flirtatious, hoping desperately that he could see what she was getting at, divulging how he affected her.

" _Distracted_... " He seemed to be turning the word over like a piece of a jigsaw puzzle in his head, looking at every angle, at every possibility, before responding in a voice that was as silken as it was uncertain. "Do I distract you?"

Heat flushed to her cheeks, and she didn't know if it was desire or a sudden rush of shyness; feeling utterly exposed as his eyes searched her face. "Yes."

"In a way that makes you more likely to want to marry me or less?"

She wiped a strand of wet hair off her forehead, and tucked it behind her ear, resisting the urge to sigh in exasperation. "Why must it always be _marriage_? It's hard to consider forever before... any of the typical steps along the way."

The visible side of his face flashed with discomfort and Erik shifted his weight from one foot to the other before answering. "It's the only way I could ever be... certain. You must remember, I have never had kindness in my life, before you, let alone - "

His eyes closed for the shortest of seconds, some memory bringing an twinge to his expression, before he repeated, "Let alone... affection. It requires near-constant effort on my part to believe this isn't all some ploy to free yourself; some deception of yours or delusion of mine, all playing out excruciatingly slowly. You could fake an… attraction, feign tenderness, even, but a lifelong commitment? No one would ever marry a monster. If you married me, I would know it was real. That I was seen as a man, by the only woman on Earth who mattered."

"Erik…" She tilted her head and felt her own eyes wincing in sympathy. "I see you as a man."

Reaching up to take his hand, she squeezed it, and felt a smile tug at the corner of her mouth. She looked at him with an emphatic openness, even as her voice came out low, as wry as it was evocative. "Trust me."

"Perhaps you've had enough rum," Erik said abruptly, stepping away from her and turning to move the bottle to a sideboard across the room.

Christine swallowed a sigh, and the urge to suggest that perhaps he hadn't had nearly enough.

Keeping his shields down was an ongoing battle, and even though she no longer took the ebb and flow of his moods personally, she wondered if they might ever be truly relaxed and free around one another... Time to head off whatever thought process was causing him to already be doubting the events of the last hour. Turning back to the music, she began the song again with a forced gusto that eventually faded into genuinely concentrating on the song, feeling the flow of the piece and hearing the way the notes resonated in the room, echoing among the rafters of the white timbered ceiling as the raindrops drummed on the roof. Several more measures and she had successfully played the first movement - even if it was just the left-hand part - and satisfaction glowed warm in her chest.

"Well done," Erik said tenderly, and the distance of a teacher's approval did nothing to conceal the ache of longing in his voice. He still stood back, the space between them conspicuous, his nerves evident. "I should discourage you from becoming any more proficient at the piano; you'll have no need for me as an accompanist."

_I'll always need you_.

She swallowed hard.

"...Little danger of that. Would you like to show me how it's done? I'll see about finding us something with vocals so we can actually sing." Standing, Christine offered him the piano bench, and he seemed grateful to be back on familiar ground as he took the seat, his posture reflecting a growing confidence.

"I suppose I could," he murmured innocently, then raised his right hand to eye level with defiant flair as he launched into an entirely different piece of music, playing an arrangement that was several orders of magnitude more complex, one-handed and entirely from memory.

For a moment, she just watched him. It was captivating, the raw energy and exuberance he brought to something he made look so effortless; she found herself a little awestruck at the force of his skill, and realizing for the first time that this flaunting of his talent was actually _flirtation._ Her heart jittered and soared.

"The Godowsky's hardly fair when you're left handed," she leaned over his shoulder and whispered, warm and teasing, half expecting him to err in playing and fully disappointed when he didn't. Her lips brushed the outer shell of his ear, flirting wickedly now, and he shivered as she breathed the final word. " _Showoff_."

His right hand reached back from its showily unused position hovering at eye level to trace the air just above her cheek, the ghost of a caress, never quite touching her - before casually extending back toward the piano and turning the sheet music for the piece she'd originally chosen back to the first page. Placing both hands on the keys, he calmly began playing the first song in full, gliding easily through the passages that had given her such trouble.

_It would be maddening if it weren't so attractive._

Her heartbeat began to return to normal, and she moved across the room to browse the bookshelves of opera and orchestral scores for a second time that evening. The selection was vast, far larger than the collections of music at any of his previous homes, and she recalled his comment about having planned to stay in the Caribbean long-term; the image of him stocking a house with music to keep himself entertained during a lifetime of solitude was so lonely that she ached. That was a thought too sad for tonight; she forced it from her mind, then pulled out a few scores that looked promising and began paging through them.

"It's funny," Erik began, speaking to her back, talking calmly over the notes as he played. "I would have chosen this song myself from the selection here; it suits my mood quite well this evening. I'm surprised something so modern was in your repertoire."

"I had a class on contemporary orchestral music during undergrad... But that's not why I picked it just now. It's not that I know neoclassicists; it's that I know you."

She looked back over her shoulder, and his eyes met hers - and then swiftly he was looking back at the notes on the sheet before him, the stiff hunch of his shoulders suggesting he was desperately trying to keep his focus on the music. He finished the page and turned to the next without pause, playing flawlessly yet robotically for several more measures before he softly spoke, without looking up at her.

"That's not an experience I ever expected to have. Being… known. As a person, with a personality, tendencies, preferences… For most of my life I've settled for being known as a persona; as a formidable threat. "

"Well, I know you now... And I know you are terrifyingly dangerous. But that's the least interesting thing about who you actually are," she said, walking over to the piano and laying the score she'd been browsing on top of it. She tilted her head and tried to read his expression, but his eyes were steely beneath the mask, focused on the material on the page as he somehow continued to draw music from the instrument. How difficult it must be for him; to confess such a thing, to be honest and vulnerable about the experiences he'd had, instead of angry and lashing out.

"I know you're a brilliant musician," she began quietly, looking anywhere but at him, her words growing in confidence and conviction as she went on. "You're brilliant at everything, really, and that makes you impatient with everyone else who can't keep up - but you like teaching and you're delighted when I get good at something new. You like to think of yourself as being cold and calculating, hyperrational and detached - and yet you have the strongest emotions of anyone I've ever met. Sometimes it's a tendency for melodrama but sometimes it's just passion, pure and bright - whether it's for me, for your music, even for a well-executed piece of architecture. The way you are when you're excited about something, when you're vehement and intense and _feeling -_ it makes my heart lift up out of my chest just to witness it... Because surely that's the point of all of this, of being _alive_ , to feel that strongly about the things that we love, to see the glory of the universe in a smile or a skyscraper or one beautiful minute of music. You were dealt a difficult hand in life and some of it you made the best of, and some of it you didn't. Ultimately you did what you had to do to survive, to get to this moment where you could actually choose how you wanted to be - and I've seen you grow so much in the last few months that I can only believe it will continue... But that almost doesn't matter, because I already see, without anything close to rose-colored glasses, the man that you are right here and now, and -"

Their eyes met, and for a minute there was only torrential rain and shaky breathing.

Erik was the first to move, slowly closing his dropped jaw, to stare at her in silence, with adoration and shock glowing wetly in his eyes. He had stopped playing entirely at some point while she spoke, and now sat with his hands at his sides, looking at a complete loss for what to do with them, for how to sit still, for how to exist in a moment when such words were being said.

"...So I know you," she finished awkwardly, conscious of having said so much - a little lightheaded, her heartbeat loud in her ears, feeling as though her soul were laid bare without ever saying the actual words. _And I love you_.

"So you do," he said hoarsely, and ducked his chin down and to the side, clearly overcome with emotion. A few rises and falls of his shoulders, a furtive wipe of his eyes and he was looking up again, completely out of his depth and gesturing at the stack of music atop the piano in a transpicuous attempt to seem unaffected. "What did wind up choosing?"

A long exhale, and she found some words to say.

"Nothing just yet. I was too busy trying to figure out what insights into your psyche I might get from analyzing your selection of opera scores." Christine gave him an appraising glance and raised an eyebrow. "I wouldn't expect to find L'Oca del Cairo and Lulu in the same collection very often."

"I have a certain appreciation for breadth and thoroughness." The hint of a smile twitched across his mouth

"To the point of collecting operas that don't even have roles for tenors? Birtwistle's Minotaur is an odd one."

"Perhaps I'm also somewhat of a masochist," he said faintly, the smile vanishing, and shook his head, closing the door on that topic quickly and resolutely. "Let's just start with whichever one you have there."

He reached for the stack of music and swallowed, once, as he saw the title. " _Semele_. This… is what you wanted to sing tonight?"

Even in the warmth of the tropical evening, she could feel her cheeks grow warm as she blushed. "It looked more upbeat than some of the options, the range is right, and I thought it might be fun - I've never sung it before."

"Evidently." He straightened his shoulders and opened the score, placing it on the music rack above the keys and flipping through the pages as he spoke. "Semele is a mortal woman that Jupiter, king of the gods, steals away from the world and brings to the heavens to be his mistress. In Handel's era, the entire opera was deemed too scandalous to even be performed due to its focus on rather carnal subject matters. But - there's an aria for Semele in the third act that calls for some rather nimble coloratura filigree; it would be a fine choice for you."

"I did read the synopsis," she looked at him pointedly. "And I was hoping we could sing together. What about the duet in Act Two? That seems like a better choice."

"The piece where Semele awakens in the palace to find Jupiter at her bedside? What are you playing at?" He leaned back, alert and guarded, his voice sharpening the words into potential weapons.

"The only thing I've played tonight is the _piano_." Christine tilted her head. "From what I saw of the score, it's a beautiful piece of music... and I didn't think we were subject to baroque-era restrictions on morality." She smiled, trying to ease the tension that hung heavy in the humid air, but Erik was unmoved by her attempt at levity. "If you'd rather sing something else -"

Beneath the mask she could see his eyes narrow, challenging - but his only response was to begin playing the prelude to the duet with his mouth set in a grim line, as though she were asking him to accompany her to certain doom. Shaking her head, she stepped around the piano bench to stand behind him, so that she could read the lyrics over his shoulder. Several measures in, she decided it probably _was_ rather risque material by 18th century standards - but it was indeed well suited for both of their vocal ranges, and as ever, singing brought calm to them both. She could sense Erik relax as the song went on, the music drawing him out of his own circles of anxiety and into the moment, into the beauty of the melody and their voices together.

Christine leaned over to turn the page for him as he reached the end of a measure, and placed a hand on his shoulder for balance; Erik didn't falter and she left it there, feeling the cool fabric of his shirt, still wet from the rain, and the wiry muscle of his shoulder beneath it. She moved her fingertips slowly across his shoulder and up to his neck, stroking her fingers along the pale, bare skin above the collar of his shirt, and he missed a note in a particularly complex passage, singing a half step too low in evident surprise. Christine froze - but he continued singing, and with aching slowness, taking minutes to move no more than a few inches, turned slightly toward her, angling his head to lean against her caressing hand and apparently throwing proper vocal form to the wind. Her thumb brushed the edge of his mask and he didn't pull away.

Turning another page for him, Christine began her next verse, focusing on the elaborate trills and complex running passages, idly stroking back down his neck and along his shoulder blade, feeling the ridges in the fabric... and realizing it was beneath the shirt; this was his flesh itself. Still singing, she looked down. The damp white cotton poplin of his shirt was plastered against his skin, and beneath it she could see a lattice of scars. It had never occurred to her that his deformity might extend beyond his face... but no, these were lines, too straight and uniform to be a birthmark. Knives? A whip?

Her voice must have faltered, because Erik turned to glance up at her - and then followed her line of sight and in an instant he was standing, stepping away from the piano, his back turned to the wall and one hand outstretched to keep her from coming any closer. "I will not discuss it. I refuse."

"I'm sorry, I-"

"Not tonight. I cannot endure pity, not when -" he swallowed, and shook his head. "Please. Pretend you saw nothing. Just... sing with me. Let me have this extraordinary evening."

Her eyes were full of sorrow, and his own gaze was obstinate and pleading at once. She wanted to comfort him, to ease the pain of whatever had happened in the past - and he wanted to be a man whose life didn't call for it. Understanding, and smiling so sadly it was a grimace, she nodded.

Christine began the song where she'd left off, endeavoring to remember the tune without accompaniment, and found herself thankful that Handel's melodies were rather repetitive. Erik's posture softened, and he gave her a single nod of gratitude, before he moved to retrieve the score from the music rack. He bent the cover back to hold it in one hand, and read the lyrics for his next part as he sang.

She expected it would be hard to focus on the music again, hard to keep from wondering about whatever violence or abuse had left Erik with such painful reminders - but the score quickly pulled her back in, and with the lyrics in English, there was no hiding from their meaning. Standing before him, singing face to face, the song suddenly felt infinitely more real; as Jupiter, Erik sang of love and his eyes were filled with it. This wasn't an voice exercise at the piano, standing dutifully behind her teacher and focusing on technique; this was flexing her skills as a singer with the greatest duet partner she'd ever had, this was sharing her life's work with someone she loved, and her mind boggled at how lucky anyone would be to ever find such a thing. Together their voices soared, and as Christine took the score from him to sing her next part, Semele's lyrics speaking of bliss and desire felt as intoxicating as the rum.

It had always been like this, with them; all the logic in the world should have kept her away and yet she was drawn to him with a force that made the pull of moon and tides look weak. The magnetism of Erik's presence - of her desire for him, of his desire for her - was so compelling that it took effort just to resist the urge to rush into his arms, and she had wasted so much time denying it. Still singing, Christine took a step toward him, and he watched her warily but did not retreat; she took another step and another, eventually standing so close that his shirtfront filled her field of view, and she had to tilt her chin up to actually look at him. The tense expression on the exposed side of his face suggested a marked effort at restraint.

She could kiss him now. She _wanted_ to. It was impossible to focus on the lyrics standing this close to him, feeling the air between them charged and alive. Her voice trailed off, mid-verse, and all she could imagine was how right would feel to kiss him, to show him he was cared for, desired - to feel the passion of this man in her arms at last, her own conscience be damned...

_He deserves a kiss that isn't poisoned with guilt. A kiss given from a free heart, a kiss of nothing but joy._

_...You deserve that too._

The thoughts struck her swiftly and she froze in her movement just as he took a tentative step toward her. She sharply looked down, but not before she saw rejection burn across his expression - and in a split second he was striding past her furiously and walking across the room, clapping a hand over his eyes and leaning forward to brace himself against the wall. Erik's shoulders rose and fell with several steadying breaths, and his voice was low and tired when he finally spoke.

"I think you had best retire for the night."

"What?" Her genuine shock echoed hollowly.

"If we continue on like this I'm going to cross a line, and I don't know where any of them are, anymore."

She took a deep breath, and ventured into dangerous territory. "...We wouldn't have to worry about lines if I weren't engaged."

"Rather a convenient excuse!" He snapped, still not turning to face her. "I understand your hesitation, when you look at me, your… revulsion… I cannot for the life of me understand tonight's drunken charade to the contrary, but I've had quite enough of it for one evening."

"Do you know what I think about when I look at you?" She spoke guilelessly, exhaustedly, tapped out of energy to keep holding back. "I look at you and I imagine what it would be like to be free. I think about it all the time - about what I would do if I weren't engaged and you weren't always threatening to kill people, and we were just us, our souls, out here in the world without any of the circumstances that have brought us so much pain. I think I would run to you. And I am so tired of fighting what my heart clearly wants."

From across the room she could see his head drop forward at her words, and a long beat passed before he responded in a low voice, ragged with anger.

"I am many kinds of monster, but not one so low as to take advantage of a woman who's had too much to drink and doesn't realize she's playing with fire. Stop toying with me and _go to bed_." The hand supporting him against the wall curled into a claw, shaking with frustration.

"Seriously, that's what you think? That you know my own mental state better than I do?" And something in her snapped; she stomped across the room and wedged herself between him and the wall he was facing, the outstretched arm supporting him rested just above her shoulder. Their faces were a breath apart. "You really have no idea."

"What is this; some kind of tragic virgin sacrifice?" His eyes flared and his voice was a low, angry hiss, but he didn't move away.

"What if I wasn't any kind of virgin _anything_? What if I was just a woman trying to save you from yourself and the lonely life you've let fate make for you?"

The eyes that met hers were wide, and his jaw clenched so hard she could see the muscles in his neck tremble. He searched her face, and she couldn't tell if he was about to roar in rage or collapse into her arms; her pulse was racing and her skin tingling, as though their proximity itself was throwing off sparks of electricity.

"You know I care about you. You know I want to take things slowly," she squared her shoulders, feeling the wall at her back, and summoned the courage to speak her heart even as she stood up for her own needs. "I know I don't want to feel guilty and unfaithful if I were to I start something with you. I know it's a ridiculous thing to say after everything we've been through in the last few months, but - it's awful to feel like I'm sneaking around. I don't want to be a cheater - _and I have a fiance._ "

"So that's what this is about," and anger seemed to give him confidence as he leaned even closer to her, menacing. "Some attempt to distract me and weaken my resolve? Plying me with false affection so I'll let you call that boy and bring the FBI fast on our trail again?"

"That is _profoundly_ insulting," she said in a low voice, scowling up at him and noting the relief in his expression; he seemed to begin arguments by accusing her of things he desperately hoped weren't true. "I am telling you what I need. I should think you would want to give it to me! But you don't trust me enough to take what I'm saying at face value. I want to talk to Raoul. I want to be confident of what I'm feeling, and make things right with him, before I can think about being yours."

"How do you expect me to believe that?" And his voice rumbled - a snarl, an accusation, but oh god, it was a plea as well, desperation and desire struggling frantically just below the surface of his tone. A glimmer of vulnerability flickered through the anger in his eyes, and she couldn't tell if it was hope or fear.

"You would have to trust me." She reached out with her left hand and took his right hand into hers, rubbing her thumb across his knuckles, and his chin dropped slightly, the hard line of his shoulders softening. Slowly - so slowly that she heard multiple claps of thunder outside, in the long minutes it took her to move - she raised his hand, pulling it up toward her to stroke the backs of his fingers down the side of her cheek, completing the caress he had almost given her at the piano.

A soft gasp escaped his lips and her stomach fluttered; she wanted to remove every obstacle and sink into his arms, into touching him, into the freedom to just be normal around him. The incredulous bliss in his eyes suggested he might not object, and so with a deep breath, she asked what she'd been wondering for weeks.

"You showed me the software to send an untraceable email back in Tokyo; would that be a safe way to send Raoul a message?"

"Yes," and Erik leaned away from her, jerking his hand back with steely eyes, fury rising - and still she felt a pang at the loss of his touch. "There are sufficiently untraceable ways of sending an email. That doesn't mean I'm going to let you do it. I know damn well that _any_ contact with that boy will be the end of _everything_ for me. You'll never want me so long if you're holding out hope for your handsome savior. Say his name again and I will kill him, I swear it!"

He was so infuriating that at the moment, breaking off her engagement seemed ridiculous - but knowing that the darknet email would be safe was intriguing...

"No you won't, and you'll stop making threats like that if you'd like us to have any kind of chance together," she said in a level voice that sounded much more calm than she felt. "Do you realize how impossible this situation is for me? I'm asking you for something, anything - a phone call, a message. I need to talk to Raoul. If you don't let me contact him in whatever way you think is safest, I'm going to take the first opportunity I get. I'll use an internet kiosk at an airport or duck into a damn Apple store and video call him from the latest iphone on display - and I won't have _time_ to be careful. I'm not going to budge on this. If you won't give me any good options I will inevitably find a bad one."

"I'll see to it that you never do," he growled possessively.

"Why would you want me as some kind of lifelong prisoner, when if you'd let me send one email, you could just have _me_?" Her frustration simmered just below the boiling point, but not so consuming that she failed to notice the shudder running through him at her choice of words. Even now - livid, exasperated, unsure if she wanted to tell him off or kiss him senseless - Christine felt utterly _alive_ , matching him toe to toe and proud of herself for it, mind and heart racing ahead, out of breath as though she'd just run offstage in triumph. She was closed in against the wall by his lean body and it was exhilarating; the scant space of air between them was charged with unseen electricity.

She reached up with her right hand to stroke her fingers along his wrist, tracing the length of the arm that was still supporting him as he leaned against the wall, almost expecting a spark and a shock at the contact of her skin to his. Looking him straight in the eye - carefully, silently asking permission, she trailed her hand up to rest on his chest, the tiniest of movements, moment by moment until her fingertips brushed his collarbone and her thumb rested on the sliver of skin exposed by the single open button at the neck of his shirt.

His right hand was on hers then, covering it and pressing against him as his eyes drifted shut. He looked to be almost in pain as he spoke, anger shakily falling away to reveal an actutely vulnerable tone in his rough whisper. "You could not possibly mean that. You cannot possibly mean any of this - touching me, telling me these things."

"God dammit Erik," she murmured tenderly. "You demand that I marry you in one breath, and in the next you insist that I could not possibly _want_ to."

His adam's apple lowered and raised again; the heartbeat beneath her palm came in staccato beats now, and his hand weighed down on top of hers as though he were jealously guarding something precious. Eyes tightly shut, he asked - bracing himself for the answer before the words were even finished. "Could you ever -"

"Yes," she exhaled in a rush, interrupting. "I think I could."

His eyes flew open, wide with shock and wonder, and beneath her hand she could feel his chest raise and lower with rapid breaths. Christine stroked her thumb across his collarbone reassuringly, feeling the smooth skin beneath the placket of his shirt and he looked at her as though his heart were breaking, or maybe being forged in a fire in that moment itself. Erik looked down at her hand across his rib cage for a long moment, the exposed half of his brow furrowed.

"I want so desperately for this to be real... If this is a ploy, you are the greatest manipulator the world has ever known, and I should bow before your terrifying craft." Erik seemed to contemplate that option with numb bewilderment, then gritted his jaw. "Do you have any idea what it's like to _want_ something so badly?"

Tilting his head, his eyes traced a path down her cheek, her neck, her arm, the remorse of a man with his heart's desire just out of arm's reach. "How susceptible it makes me. I've spent my life ensuring I was never vulnerable on any front… and yet I sacrifice pride on a bonfire at your feet every time. Do you know how much power you have? You could name... terms... limits... If there is any part of you that wants anything at all from me, _with_ me - you would have all of me following your every wish. Tell me how to - tell me _what_ to -" his voice hitched.

"...I already told you. Let me -"

"Tell me anything else!" He roared so loudly she startled, yet the wince on his face spoke not of anger but of desperation; he was terrified. "You cannot possibly need more time! You must decide outright!"

Unfazed, shaking her head sadly, she raised her left hand to the back of his neck, and drew his head down closer to her shoulder, stroking comfortingly up the back of his skull, hardly even noticing the wig, so deep was her concern for the man. He flinched at her touch and then leaned into it, letting out a low groan of pleasure and anguish combined.

"Erik… You insist that everything must happen on your terms. I don't know what to do."

He swayed forward toward her, knees collapsing slightly and the arm supporting him against the wall bending until his forearm was lying almost flat against the painted white boards. She could feel his breath, shaky and hot, against the still-damp skin of her shoulder, flickers of air flowing down over the curves exposed at the neckline of her sundress. Her willpower was unraveling, desire whispering in the back of her mind that surely she could steal a moment, surely new boundaries could be drawn and crossed and drawn again. Tenderly running her fingers along the nape of his neck, pulling him even closer, she relished the feeling of his body this close to hers.

When he spoke, his lips nearly brushed her throat, and she felt a heated tremble run through her.

"What... do you want?"

Things she couldn't have. Ways to have what she wanted and hurt no one else in the process. Certainty that following her heart wasn't insane. The warmth of an embrace, of human contact, after so many months of nothing more than fleeting touches. The freedom to just kiss him, right here and now. A clean conscience. A compromise.

"Touch me?" she finally asked, her voice pouring ache into the words. "Hold me, something - _anything_. Just touch me."

Cautiously, he pushed away from the wall, the tiniest amount, enough to raise his head, to look in her eyes, wary and hungry, searching her expression for malice and finding none; seeming all the more confused for it. And then he was backing away from her, brow furrowed and spinning on a heel to move decisively for the door. Maybe he was angry, maybe he didn't trust himself or her but it didn't matter because whatever the reason, he was leaving, and her heart plummeted.

"Erik, _please_ \- " And she was the one begging, now.

With a sensuality that was almost feline - not the languid stride of a cat but the coiled power of a jaguar poised to strike - he turned mid-stride, broke like a promise and lunged back toward her, closing the scant steps in a fraction of a second and his hands slammed flat against the wall on either side of her head. He was caging her in completely, but that hardly mattered when there was nowhere else on earth she wanted more to be.

Squaring her shoulders she stared at him, unflinching, and the taut fury of his posture softened as they stood, eye to eye, so close they were surely breathing the same air. Surely he could hear her heart hammering in her chest, surely he could see what she wanted, more than anything, even if she couldn't say it.

With a movement so slow and calculated he might have been reaching for wires to defuse a bomb, Erik slowly raised his left hand and touched her cheek, then drew the pads of his fingers down her jawline. Shakily, she gave him a tiny smile. He repeated the gesture, then with a sharp intake of breath, trailed his fingertips down the side of her throat, the lightest of touches, the softest of gazes, and she felt utterly examined, exposed, revered… _possessed_.

Ever so slightly, she tilted her chin up, bringing her face ever closer to his, and for a moment his eyes were on her, pupils dilated with desire, before looking down again, rapt, as his fingertips traced along her collarbone now. Carefully, with much consideration, he brushed a strand of her wet hair back, over her shoulder, running his hand over the strap of her sundress and then along her arm, past her elbow and down the outside of her forearm until his hand encompassed hers and squeezed. He exhaled in a gigantic rush of air, a flood gate breaking, wavering forward a fraction of an inch, and she took that moment to wrap an arm around his waist, to pull him flush against her into a hug and oh -

Well. At least something about his reaction to her was normal.

And then, the thought entered her mind: _Thank god._

Christine didn't move - didn't back down, didn't back away from the obvious hardness pressing against her hip, and _want_ flooded her mind with a thousand things she could do next. Finally she looked up at Erik, her body shifting the tiniest bit, a millimeter to one side - and with a choking gasp of air, he slammed both hands against her hips, fingers splayed wide, rigid arms halting any further motion; eyes wide, breathing heavily.

" _What_ are you doing?" and it was a growl and a gasp at once, an accusation tinged with shock, with hope, with a desire he was trying and failing to hide.

"Holding you…" she said in a dry whisper. "Don't be - I mean, you don't have to feel -" swallowing, Christine felt every bit as awkward as the feelings she was trying to soothe in him. "...I'm almost glad, really. I feel like… like I try to flirt with you, and you keep pushing me away, keep insisting I'm not in my right mind. It's kind of nice to... have a sign that you really do want me."

He pressed the exposed side of his face into his hand, still standing in the circle of her arms. "You want to know if I _want_ you."

"That's not exactly -"

"Christine, you seem to want to goad me into choosing _for_ you, and what I want is your _choice_. Everything I have ever had in this life, I have gotten by _taking_ \- by conniving and stealing and desperately grasping for the things normal men are given as birthright or earnings or as part of the natural progression of existence. I want you - your caresses, your touch, your love - to an extent that even _I_ know is well beyond the brink of madness. And yet - and yet I know that I will have _nothing_ , until I have something that is _given_ to me. I couldn't live with having to take for myself the only gift I've ever wanted."

And her heart was breaking, then, overwhelmed with the urge to give him everything and unable to give up everything her own heart insisted she needed first.

"How I _want_ you," he said hoarsely, his voice soft and deep as he looked down at her, tender and lost. "This is the hardest thing I've ever done."

He took a step back, and then back stepped again, turning on his heel and walking out of the room. Without looking back at her, he breathed a single word.

"Choose."

**XXXXXXXX**

She awoke the next morning to the sound of an engine, the disconcerting tone pulling her out of a deep sleep and she rubbed her eyes with confusion before she was able to register what the repeating _whump_ in the air might mean. Wandering out of her bedroom and onto the veranda, she found Erik speaking with a uniformed pilot in dark sunglasses, a gleaming black helicopter perched casually on the lawn behind him. Erik was holding his panama hat on with one hand against the wind, and palm fronds whipped in the gusts of air from the massive rotor blades; the copilot was still sitting at the vehicle's controls, ready for takeoff.

"Darling!" Erik looked over his shoulder with faux ease, and she noted he was wearing the flesh-toned mask again. "I was just about to wake you. Are your bags packed yet?" Gesturing to the pilot that he would return shortly, he turned and crossed the distance to the house, ushering her inside and shutting the door behind them.

"Forgive me; I truly was going to speak to you next. Transport arrived ahead of schedule and you'll need to pack with some hurry..." On her troubled expression, he asked, concerned. "Are you quite all right? Did you sleep?"

"Yes," Christine said, shaking her head. "That's not it. I just… Someday I hope you call me darling and mean it." She caught his eye, and the world stopped, for a moment - but it was impossible to ignore the impatient whine of the helicopter's engine. "Why are we leaving? We just got here -"

"And I intend to return posthaste," Erik answered definitively. "But dear Vladimir has contacted me with the offer of a negotiation and a rather obvious trap he'd like me to walk into, and I must make a stop in Zurich before the rendezvous."

"Why Zurich?"

"I must go to _my banker_."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **Oh my god, you guys, this chapter was such a tightrope to walk! It's quite the challenge to write two characters who clearly belong together in the end…. and then give them every possible obstacle to keep them apart. But, I started out with the intention that this story was a very long Down Once More and I am doing my best to stick to it. We are only one or two chapters away from Final Lair at this point.**
> 
> **It's hard to keep them apart - but as much as they are drawn to one another, the fact remains that Erik has some serious trust issues, and is in desperately far over his head at this point; I think it's fairly likely that he would be cagey, afraid to hope and wanting desperately to be able to, all at once. I've heard from a few readers that they want Christine to just forget Raoul entirely and dive headfirst into a relationship with Erik, but I think if she really does care about Raoul, she would feel lousy about doing that - and frankly, she cares enough about Erik not to want to feel lousy and sneaky about being with him. Christine deserves a clear conscience, Erik deserves love without guilt, and Raoul deserves an honest and compassionate "no". Trying to give it to all of them is a bit of a challenge. :-)**
> 
> **But I'd love to hear what you think - as I keep saying, Volée has quite seriously the most amazing readership of any story I've ever written - your reviews are incisive and so full of heart; you've pointed out nuances and helped me make this story a million times better.**
> 
> **This chapter required a ton of research to find operas with suitable undertones and subtle meanings for the debate they have, and I'll cover all the background on veroniqueclaire*tumlbr*com , along with imagery as usual. One thing I really wanted to show was that Christine has also studied music - in Leroux, she's studied at the Conservatory, and in Volée I've made her a grad student at NYU. I like the idea of her being able to appreciate and discuss music as Erik's equal, not as his student in all aspects other than singing.**
> 
> **Also, hat tip to those who caught my little Leroux reference. ;-)**
> 
> **Please do review!**
> 
> **~Ver**


	20. Chapter 20

The improvised helipad on the lawn fell away below them with surprising speed, as though the earth were sinking instead of the helicopter ascending, and Christine pressed her face to the window, watching the island recede on the horizon until it was nothing more than a dot of green atop the Caribbean Sea, and then vanished from sight entirely. Staring at the ocean as it whisked by underneath, both hands gripping the straps of the four-point seat belt coming over her shoulders, several minutes passed in silence before she finally looked up at the sealed window to the cockpit and then over at Erik.

He was sitting in the white leather seat facing hers, strapped in with a similarly elaborate safety restraint that seemed to be the only thing keeping him in his seat; his eyes were intent on her, and when her gaze finally met his own, he swallowed, finding the first words to say since they'd finally been alone together that morning.

"...I don't suppose any of your contemporary music classes covered Stockhausen's Helikopter-Streichquartett?"

His tone was light and flippant and hid none of the rawness in his voice, a graveled edge to his tone. She brushed the comment aside and looked at him, intent and anxious. "I can't joke right now. Will you tell me what's going on?"

"We are enroute to a landing pad on the outskirts of Port of Spain, in the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, where we will go through an elaborate procedure to distance ourselves from this helicopter. We will eventually make our way to the airport and board a series of flights that will eventually land us in Zürich, following the usual travel protocols that you will find more familiar."

"Not the logistics. I want to know _why_. What's going on? You said it was a trap... but Vrioni finally accepted your truce deal?"

"Not exactly," his mouth settled into a grim line, with obvious reluctance to continue. "Approximately 5 hours ago I received a message outlining a dropoff point -"

"You were up checking your email last night?"

"As if I could _sleep_ ," he exhaled in a tender rush, the professional veneer of tactics and hypercompetence breaking with a self-deprecating little laugh that was more frantic than funny. Erik looked at her, lovestruck and lost, seeking something in her eyes that she was happy to give, and she would have given anything for him to reach out and touch her right then.

Christine loosened her grip on the seat belt's shoulder straps and leaned her head against her left hand, meeting his gaze, warm and unguarded. "That makes two of us," she whispered, feeling her own heartbeat accelerate at the memory.

His eyes softened; the urgent edge left his expression and he returned the tenderness in her look for a long moment before he swallowed and continued, his tone husky and warm. "Sometime around three AM I found myself wishing — _for some reason_ — that the various loose ends in our lives were resolved, and I decided to check in on mine. And once the rage subsided, I started making arrangements."

"...Can I see the message?"

"It's not particularly pleasant, I'd rather spare you -"

"You promised, back in Bulgaria, that you would start including me." She held out her hand, patient but firm, and with enormous hesitation - a greater reluctance than she had ever seen from him before - he withdrew a phone from his jacket pocket, loaded the darknet email and handed it to her to read. The screen was barely bright enough for her to make out in the tropical sun streaming in through the helicopter's windows; she cupped one hand over the phone to shade it so she could read.

**IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII**

_From: vrv at_ municionetvrioni*al

_To: 0110000101101110011010110111010001101000 at *******.org_

_So you're a man on the run these days - wanted by FBI, CIA, and half of Interpol, all for a woman? You never used to be so fucking careless, but regularly getting laid can turn a man's head. I'd like to turn your ugly head until it comes off entirely, but my business manager has convinced me that taking your money is a better investment._

_I don't play your little computer games, Ankth, and I don't believe in funds I can't see._

_Bring the 30 million Euro in diamonds and maybe I'll trust you. We'll meet at an airport — after security — so you can trust me. MXP, Terminal 1A, in the private club near boarding gate A. 1pm, next Wednesday._

_Or don't, and I'll call out a hit on you, like you would have done for me by now if you hadn't suddenly lost your spine._

_Eat shit and die,_

_~VRV_

**IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII**

"May I kill him, please?" Erik's voice was a layer of velvet over his own obvious anger. "Look at how proficient I'm becoming in saying that word. _Please_. Think what a lovely gift you could make to me, of the chance to be free of this distasteful little warlord."

She looked up from the screen and met his eyes, trying to read the mix of emotions there. "...Are you worried I'll be offended that he implied -"

" _Stop_ ," he interjected harshly. "I don't need to hear you say it. Obviously it was a ludicrous assumption and a repulsive insult to your person," and his tone was so sharp, so biting that anyone would hear it as anger but it was _fear_ , she could tell, just under the surface.

"It's not that crazy, so far as assumptions go," Christine said softly. "And I'm not offended by it. At all."

God, it was a drug, the way he looked at her; the way he was looking at her this very moment like she was some incomprehensible alien miracle, like every word she said was some gift he couldn't believe anyone would ever be mad enough to give to him, and she fought the urge to punch the button on the seat belt harness and free herself, fall forward into his arms, kiss the bewilderment out of his expression and take on the world by his side.

The rhythmic chop and whirl of the helicopter rotors through the air seemed to match the shakiness of both of their breathing, and the buzz of the engine droned on in the background for a stretch of time, before either was able to speak.

"...As though I needed to _sleep_ with you to have my head turned completely," Erik said quietly, in a tender tone of voice reserved for lost causes. He looked at her in calm wonder for a long minute before continuing. "I'm compromised just from your presence… Utterly distracted. But not so severely that I fail to notice the Milan rendezvous is a trap. Vrioni suggests meeting in an airport; it's a time-honored approach that guarantees both parties have passed through a metal detector and are presumably unarmed. But it's an asinine thing to propose given the parties involved; he's a bloody arms dealer, paranoid to the point that he hides loaded weapons in every room of his house — and he knows damn well I don't need a gun to do him in.

"So the MXP gambit is clearly the suggestion of someone else that he's working with, someone who _is_ capable of bringing weapons into an airport, and we will be walking into an ambush." His tone was matter-of-fact, and he sounded more weary and frustrated than someone describing life-and-death violence ought to be. "I'll lay strong odds it's law enforcement, possibly even Agent Khan himself, as Vrioni has clearly done his research in the past month - and any tip Vladimir called in would eventually make its way to the lead agent on our case. I'll attempt my usual tricks to read Khan's communications and confirm once we're somewhere with a more reliable connection than I had on the island."

The helicopter jolted through turbulence, and she told herself that was why her stomach fluttered and dropped. "Agent Khan," she began slowly. "Surely he wouldn't work with someone like Vrioni."

"Espionage is a business of temporary alliances with lesser evils; it's entirely possible that he would strike a deal with an unsavory informant if it meant getting closer to me. So, if you'd like to meet up with the cavalry, they'll almost certainly be waiting for you in Milan."

She swallowed. "And if I'd rather stay with you?"

A blink, and it was over — but not before she saw the expression in his eyes, a twinge that was a universe unto himself, a pulse of joy like a wave crashing on a cliff and throwing water skyward; a thousand calculations flashed before he nodded, and reached into his suitcase to withdraw a tablet, fancier and twice as large as the one still concealed in her handbag.

"Then I could use your help reviewing the information I've gathered. My previous approach was clearly insufficiently threatening; the pressure we need to exert at this point requires some better comprehension of the players involved, and understanding human beings is demonstrably more your forté than mine."

**XXXXXXXX**

_[redacted] to Port of Spain; 106 miles, twenty minutes_

_Port of Spain to Curaçao; 529 miles, two hours_

Helicopter to a tiny plane to a sunny yellow airport, full of sunburnt vacationers returning home. Striding forward along the jetway toward an enormous airplane, the largest she'd been on since the last time they'd crossed an ocean, everyone around her speaking German and Erik breezing past all of them with the standard set of false credentials, up to the relative safety and seclusion of their seats, another plastic cocoon of first-class privacy to surround them. Safety procedures and seat belts and flight attendants walking down the aisle with a cart full of _Zeitungen und Zeitschriften_ , offering glasses of _Champagner oder Orangensaft_ , the same set of rituals no matter what the language.

Some hours later, after what must have been the tenth or fifteenth dinner she'd eaten miles above the earth, Erik stood, rummaged through his luggage for a moment, then brushed past her aisle seat and walked toward the front of the cabin. She nodded toward him and then turned her gaze toward the oval window, watching the last line of the sun's orange fire disappear from the horizon as the airplane rushed toward tomorrow and they caught up to the stars of the nighttime for a day they hadn't fully finished. He returned wordlessly, and handed her his tablet again, with the remainder of the documents she had been reviewing earlier loaded on it.

"I know you think that I understand _people_ , but weapons deals and cabals are pretty far outside my expertise. I'm not sure what I'm even looking for, here," she confessed, after reading several more pages of bank statements, organizational structure documents, and cargo lists of shipments for Vrioni Munitions.

"Some way to apply pressure to Vrioni that might be more effective than threatening his child, as that doesn't appear to have frightened him sufficiently, since he's still attempting a double cross. This is all the information I've been able to gather from my various contacts; see if you can find anything that looks awry, something that might be used to provide leverage. An outstanding debt, an internal power struggle; _something_."

"Hrm... " she flipped back to a photograph of chart drawn in pen on a napkin, and tried to ignore the bloodied knuckles of what was almost certainly Erik's hand in the corner of the picture; tried not to think about the methods he'd used to get this information. "The only thing that seems weird is - in the email, he mentioned a business manager. Who was that, when you worked with him?"

"My time in the Balkans was mostly..." Erik touched a finger to his lips and seemed to struggle through some discomfort before responding. "Let's call it 'fieldwork.' I spent mercifully little time with the rest of his cabal."

"Ok. Well, my theory is that Mirjeta is the brains of the operation." Christine flipped back to another document and handed it to him. "She's educated. Her travel history lines up with the largest deals. Who else would he trust, anyway? I don't know if threatening their kid was the right approach with her. She's a businesswoman; make her a deal."

" _Fascinating_ ," Erik's eyes glittered as he tilted his head and looked at her, seeming nowhere nearly as interested in the information as he was in her mind for having divined it.

"May I offer you anything?" a voice interrupted and she looked up to see a flight attendant with a trolley laden with deserts and after-dinner drinks.

"Just coffee, thanks," she replied

"Decaf for both of us," Erik interjected tersely, without looking up from the document he was suddenly back to reading, in a routine she recognized now as one of his tactics for avoiding the awkwardness of interacting with someone likely to stare at the mask, however realistic it was.

"Since when do you worry about caffeine?" she teased in a low voice, as soon as they were alone again.

"I don't suppose you would believe I'm concerned about getting my beauty sleep?" He raised his visible eyebrow - and on her eyeroll at his glib response, gestured that she should lean toward him as he whispered softly. "The only passenger who would be drinking regular coffee on a transcontinental redeye is the gentleman with the buzz cut and no carry-on luggage, sitting in the aisle seat four rows up." Erik's lips brushed the edge of her ear as he murmured, his voice low and resonant, sending shivers down her spine entirely unfitting for the words he was actually saying.

He continued, "Note how he didn't remove his blazer when he sat down; that's to hide the shoulder holster. Air Marshal. I've put a heavy sedative in his coffee; he'll be perfectly fine, but will be taking a rather unexpected eight hour nap."

" _Erik_!" she hissed in a scolding whisper. And she ought to be livid, ought to be experiencing some sort of personal trigger right now, shouldn't be admonishing him in a tone of exasperation so tender she was almost _giggling._ She made a mental note to have a long conversation about consent and boundaries when this was all over. Maybe several long conversations. "You can't just go around _drugging_ people. Add that to the list of things I'm not ok with."

"It was the best option," he said matter-of-factly. "I will need to have a weapon when we land in Dusseldorf, and there's really only one way to acquire a gun mid-air."

**XXXXXXXX**

_Curaçao to Dusseldorf; 10 hours, 4950 miles_

"Perfectly reasonable attire for travel in the Caribbean, but no one will be wearing tropical weight wool in Switzerland in April," Erik had told her, gesturing at her outfit. "Go buy the most forgettable set of cool-weather, business-appropriate clothing you can find."

And so she found herself in the dressing room of a popular designer store in the duty free section of an airport in Germany, with a belted grey wool overcoat, a black knit hat, black trousers, and a stack of blouses in pale colors to try on - and yet the garments were all hanging on the door as she sat, curled up on the bench in the dressing room, frantically trying to download the darknet app to the tablet using the airport's free wifi.

While waiting, she checked the social network, using the fake account she had created more than a month ago - but no one had posted in the "Bring Christine Daae Home" group about any potential leads, and neither Raoul nor Meg had posted anything to their personal pages either. They almost certainly couldn't talk about it yet… and yet part of her had been hoping desperately for confirmation one way or the other. If they truly were on a collision course for an ambush Milan, if Agent Khan would be there - would Raoul be there? Would there be a moment where she she speak to him?

She shook her head. What was she going to do - shout out an apology that she had feelings for someone else, while gunfire rained down around them? Email was best. The darknet app had finished downloading and she opened it, watching as it bounced the signal of her request from router to router around the globe before it reached the anonymous email service. She created an account, opened a new email, typed Raoul's address in the To: line and was copying over the message she had saved as a text file and re-read so many times since then, when there came a sharp knock at the door.

" _Christine_ ," Erik said tersely from the other side, and she nearly jumped, clutching the tablet against her chest, terrified she would drop it on the floor where it would be visible below the dressing room's door.

"Yes?" A single word, and enough emotion in her tone to sound utterly guilty.

"I need to ask you something," his voice came out tight and uncomfortable and her heart raced. Was that the sharp tinge of suspicion in his tone? "A purely tactical question, I can assure you, relating to both of our _safety_ , and the odds of law enforcement or other unwelcome persons tracking us down in Zürich."

"Yes?" she shakily breathed.

"...Would you please describe what you are wearing?"

A flood of relief came, so visceral she almost laughed, before she swallowed it and responded, describing the outfit she had chosen to try on.

"Thank you - that should be all I need. Hurry and pay, and meet me on the concourse. We have ten minutes before we need to transfer terminals."

She turned the tablet off - draft mail unsent - and shoved it back into the hiding spot in her purse.

**XXXXXXXX**

Standing in line, wearing her new clothing, waiting for security at the next terminal for their next flight, she thought about the oddness of trudging forward inch by inch, after jetting across an ocean at hundreds of miles per hour. For his part, Erik was acting nonchalant and courteous to other passengers, and by now she knew that meant something was amiss. The line approached the metal detector and she lifted her bag onto the conveyor belt, trying to look backwards over her shoulder as she did so - but the scene was mundane; an unremarkable airport among the dozens she'd been in so far. People waited in line. The woman behind them put her purse in a plastic tray. The man behind her withdrew a laptop from his suitcase and checked his phone. Kids ran around and their parents tried to corral them into the line.

Their bags inched forward toward the metal detector and she looked back at Erik just in time to see a flash of silver as he casually slipped something into the unzipped suitcase of the man with the laptop - so deft that she wouldn't believed she had seen it, had she not seen him do the same sleight of hand a half-dozen times back at the Met - then he was ushering her forward wordlessly, walking through the metal detector and offering gracious thanks in German to the security agents.

"Quikly," he whispered so softly she had to lean closer to hear it, "as quickly as you can - get everything and go, put it back in your suitcase later," and he was gathering up both of their suitcases and striding briskly forward. They were several minutes past the security checkpoint when an alarm sounded.

"Don't look back." On her worried glance, he added, "The luggage X-ray has just found a gun in that man's suitcase, which is going to be terribly inconvenient for him. He will spend several days in a holding cell explaining that it's definitely not his, and he will be in quite a bit of trouble with Vladimir Vrioni for failing to tail us properly."

**XXXXXXXX**

_Dusseldorf to Zürich; 275 miles, one hour_

"Are we being followed again?" Christine looked over her shoulder, examining the sea of faces exiting the airport into the drizzly grey afternoon.

"Possibly. Vladimir knows I would have to speak to my banker before coming up with that large a sum of money in tangible form, and there's only a half dozen cities where such a financier would reside. He would have put men in the relevant airports to try and anticipate our arrival - hence our friend in Dusseldorf. But I have a vested interest in keeping my associates confidential - hence my response." The visible corner of his mouth curved up the tiniest bit in amusement, before Erik continued. "I'm not sure what he's attempting; all my indicators suggest he is currently at his primary residence in Tirana - but I imagine he's hoping some scenario plays out in Milan that ends in both my arrest _and_ one of his goons still making off with the money."

Christine swallowed, contemplating that option, and finally said tiredly, "I just want this all to be over."

"Don't think for a moment that I don't," and he sent her a sideways glance so impassioned that she shivered, warmth unfurling in her heart. "Having recently experienced one of the better evenings of my previously dismal existence, I'm suddenly quite keen to continue that trajectory."

He shook his head; at himself, it seemed, "...And living in fear of one of my worst enemies working alongside law enforcement to entrap us both is a large barrier to doing so. Either on their own have proven manageable over the years, but it's all come to a breaking point now."

The reached the curb, and turned toward the row of waiting towncars, each with a driver holding a sign bearing the name of the passenger they were awaiting; Erik checked his watch impatiently, then seemed to relax, just as a man and woman rudely pushed by both of them, and then another couple did the same.

Christine looked up to protest - and then noticed both women were wearing the same black pants, grey herringbone tweed overcoat and knit hat that she wore; the men's attire matched Erik's slim grey suit and dark overcoat, even down to the wide-brim fedora pulled low over their faces. Looking back she saw three more sets of doppelgangers, each getting into one of the waiting towncars.

"But," Erik said lightly, opening the door of the fourth car for her and gesturing at the driver to start the engine and raise the privacy screen. "If we were being followed before, we certainly won't be after this."

**XXXXXXXX**

The black car glided off the highway and into the streets of Zürich, and the only noise was the gentle purr of the engine and the wet-velcro sounds of the tires on the damp pavement. Switzerland's largest city was grey skies and green trees, the leaves shiny with rain; mountains looming in the background, still snow-capped even this late in the spring; it was clean streets and marble buildings and arched bridges over canals leading to the lake at the city's southern edge.

"You'll be meeting an associate of mine shortly, and there's some protocol I ought to explain. We will be discussing a great many things and won't have time to explain all of them. If you have any urgent questions, ask them directly and with concision; she doesn't have an appreciation for small talk."

"Is this your banker?" Christine turned from the window and curled up in her seat facing him.

"Yes, Petra Müller-Zhang; she handles a good deal of my finances, among other things."

"That's an unusual name for Switzerland; did she take her husband's surname?"

"Her wife's, I believe," Erik corrected. "Petra is a longtime associate, and as pleasant to work with as it gets in this business, where 'pleasant' essentially equates to hypercompetency."

"Is she... good?" Christine tried to read his expression. "Can you trust her?"

"I trust her to do her job. As for her alliances, I would say she aims to continue the grand Swiss tradition of neutrality; she just looks after the money... And the remote detonation of plastic explosives, occasionally, if one of her clients needs it. She's very good on operations. Like most citizens in Switzerland, Petra is ex-military; she's just taken those skills a bit more seriously as a career. Her bank caters to a particular sort of clientele. Full service, excellent customer support, if you follow."

Christine felt cold, suddenly, in a way that had nothing to do with the spring rain pattering on the roof of the car.

**XXXXXXXX**

The towncar dropped them off in front of a stately bank in the center of the city, and they and were shown into Frau Müller-Zhang's office. Petra was slightly shorter than her, with blonde hair pulled back into a tidy ponytail; she gave Christine a perfunctory greeting, admonished Erik for being late, and then laid out a set of documents and spent the next twenty minutes discussing the minutiae of a financial trust plan with him.

She was intelligent and focused, courteous but unyielding in her opinions as they debated the details of the financial maneuver he was proposing; it was fascinating to watch Erik interact with someone in a world outside his own; to see the opera ghost defer to someone else's judgement.

_He compromised for you, even when he thought it might get you both killed to do so._

And then both Erik and Petra were standing, closing laptops and gathering belongings, ushering Christine down a set of marble stairs and through a series of serious locked doors into what appeared to be the former safety deposit vaults of the bank; the room was filled with monitors and computer equipment, sharply contrasting the walls of old locked vaults. The conversation turned to weapons, and Erik began unlocking safety deposit boxes, apparently his own, removing stacks of metal boxes from within them, heavy objects rattling about inside. She felt the chill again, fear snaking down her back - but true to her promise remained quiet, an observer in the background.

Erik vanished and reappeared fifteen minutes later, his suit traded for a set of dark black military-looking clothes, and a charcoal grey jacket patterned with the same barcode print as the lining of the coat he had shown her in Tokyo. Christine sat silently and awkwardly in an aeron chair, doing her best to comply with Erik's earlier request, as he and Petra turned on the massive computer screens, and worked to connect them to what appeared to be live feeds from security cameras within the building they were currently in.

Seemingly satisfied with the results, Erik tapped a communications link at his ear; Petra spoke several words into a microphone and he nodded approvingly. She withdrew her headphones, tapped her watch then flashed five fingers, and exited the room.

"You weren't kidding about her being all business," Christine said, breaking the silence as Erik approached her. "How am I doing?"

"Magnificently," he breathed, and it sounded like _I love you._ "A lesser person would be considerably more stressed right now. This won't take long; six hours at the outside. And with visual support it will be easy; Petra trained as a sniper during her army service; she has good eyes."

Christine tilted her head, not entirely following. "You said something about that earlier - most Swiss people were in the military?"

"The saying goes, 'Switzerland doesn't _have_ an army; Switzerland _is_ an army.'" Erik raised his visible eyebrow. "Part of their commitment to neutrality involves a national conscription into the military for the majority of the population, and heavily bulwarked infrastructure. Bridges and highways rigged to explode if an outside invasion began, fighter jets hidden in airplane hangars concealed in mountain cliff faces… that sort of thing. I have enormous respect for their work. It's the safest possible place I could leave you, and in the safest possible hands."

"What?" Panic thrummed beneath her breastbone, anxiety rising, and she flailed, reaching out to grab his gloved fingers in her own, to hold him there. "I'm coming with you. Wherever you're going - whatever the plan is - you're not leaving me behind."

" _Christine_ ," he murmured, looking down at their joined hands, and it was an admonishment and a lovesong. He shook his head "I live an existence of managed risk - and if you think I'm going to let you walk into a heavily weaponized assault strike, you've gravely misunderstood my risk tolerance."

His words were logical and awful, and she gripped his hand and shook her head in objection.

"Look at it this way, then," he softened. "I will be safer if I'm only focused on keeping myself alive. The sooner this is over, the sooner we can go back to the Caribbean "

"It's not about the island; you get that, right? It's just you." Her heart hammered in her chest and she caught his gaze. "All I want is you. Safe and alive."

She expected him to melt at the admission, but his eyes darkened. "If that were actually all you desired, we would be sitting at a piano working through the finer points of Handel's melismas right now, and I would have paid a professional to remove Vladimir from my list of concerns. You want some sort of proof that I can solve problems without fatalities."

She winced. He dropped her hands and walked around to the other side of the metal table in the middle of the room, turning silently to the set of latched metal boxes stacked atop its surface and methodically laying them out and opening them, revealing a terrifying array of weapons.

"I just don't want you to kill anyone you don't have to. It's a reasonable thing for me to be worried about."

"I've yet to eliminate a person unnecessarily," he said coldly, methodically packing guns and knives into the pockets lining his jacket, deliberately not looking up to meet her eyes.

"You killed Buquet."

"He attacked me on the bridge above the flies," came his emotionless reply.

"...You killed Piangi," she swallowed the lump in her throat, and continued, steady. "I saw it on the news in the airport, months ago. He couldn't have possibly attacked you."

"Piangi was in the way!" Erik slammed his hands on the table between them, eyes blazing. "Have you forgotten I'm a monster?"

"I have made my peace with the fact that you have done monstrous things," she said, calm and sad. "But that's not who you are. This isn't a trial. I don't even want you to go - if we could just leave, now, and avoid all of this..."

He shot her a look that was both furious and heartbroken, and left without a word.

**XXXXXXXX**

Christine sat silently and watched the array of computer monitors over Petra's shoulder, as the tall blonde tracked Erik's movements on a series of what appeared to be hacked feeds of security cameras. There were storefront CCTVs throughout Zürich, then a view from a terminal security camera of a small airstrip and a private plane; an hour of radio silence later, the series of cameras picked up again, with views of what she could only assume was Vrioni's home town of Tirana. Each camera turned to focus on Erik for as long as he was in sight, seemingly magnetically, and she suspected it had something to do with the barcode hacking technique he had shown her on his jacket in Japan.

The view jumped rapidly from one camera to the next, but after a while she grasped the flow of watching him across all of them and it became a little like watching a movie from multiple angles at once; if she could momentarily forget her fear that his life might be in peril at any moment, it was almost beautiful, just being able to _watch_ him. Every moment he made - walking down a street, stepping off a small airplane and down the external stairway to the tarmac, coat unfurling behind him - radiated a captivating grace, feline and powerful and utterly dangerous.

The cameras cut out again - presumably Erik was outside of any area covered by the traffic cameras in Tirana - and Petra checked her watch, then took off the microphone headset she wearing and looked over at Christine.

"If you'd like to leave, now would be the best time. The confrontation could get rather… unpalatable." Her voice was blunt, but not unkind.

Christine shook her head. "I would just be worried in the next room, instead of worried here. I won't be ok until he's back."

The blonde woman tilted her head in response, and looked at Christine, seeming to evaluate her for a long moment before speaking. "My wife always says the same thing about me." she finally admitted, matter-of-fact but tinged with sympathy. "I always make it back."

Petra turned back to the monitors and donned the headset again, as the street cameras showed a car Erik had apparently purchased approaching a manor home on the outskirts of Tirana, and she spoke into the microphone. "I can't get visual until you're on-site and overriding the cameras, but the most recent security badge swipes indicate you will find three guards at the north perimeter, two at the east, and four more at stations throughout the house."

"Targets?"

"Both present. And… you are now within range, local cameras coming online."

The view on the monitors suddenly cut to what must have been Vrioni's private security feeds, and Christine suddenly realized the utility of having a second set of eyes, as Petra deftly navigated Erik through the perimeter of Vrioni's estate, alerting him to each guard, and around each blind corner of the hallways in the rather opulent house. With the element of surprise, he was able to swiftly dispatch with each guard he encountered, knocking them unconscious and quickly moving on.

At the top of a flight of stairs Erik looked directly up at a security camera and spoke softly into the microphone at his collar. "Is Christine watching?"

"Yes - I'm here," she blurted out, lunging forward to speak into the microphone Petra held out for her.

Even via the black and white security camera image, she could see his eyes were tired.

"I thought you might have turned away in disgust by now."

"I'm trying to trust that you're doing what you have to do."

He tilted his head, and breathed into the microphone. "Wish me luck, then. One way or another, it all ends here."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

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> **Author's note: At last, at last! This chapter was originally twice as long, but I decided to break it into two pieces, so expect chapter 21 in considerably less time than it took me to write chapter 20. Now that we're in the last ~5 chapters I'm actually writing the whole thing at once, to make sure I don't leave any loose ends unaccounted for.**
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> **Quite a lot of plot to move through in this chapter, to get them where they needed to be - rest assured the next installment will have all kinds of fluff and angst - but in the meantime, hope you're enjoying the superspy tactics! As always, I live for your reviews, and I am in debt for how much better your insights have made this story.**
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> **New images, as always, at veroniqueclaire*tumblr*com**
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> **This chapter was my last major plot hurdle - everything from here on out is planned and in some cases, written. For a while it felt like I'd written myself into a corner, because I realized there was no chance Erik would let Christine enter a dangerous situation, and yet she needed to witness the confrontation between him and Vrioni in order to understand just how dark his life used to be. Petra Müller-Zhang, banker to the underworld and badass on tactical strike tech was my solution, and I grew quite fond of her as I sketched out her and her wife Evelyn's backstory in my head. It was nice to have an opportunity to show Christine's humanity - she is so genuine, emotionally, that even this stoic businesswoman-soldier cracks the facade to relate to her - and it was nice to find a way to add a little LGBT diversity too.**


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